Mapping the Unmappable: A Conversation with Four Southeast Asian Writers
Wednesday, March 8th, 5-7 pm
University of Washington, Communications Building, CMU Room 202
Co-presented by Southeast Asia Center (UW) and Singapore Unbound
Free and Open to All
Learn more: bit.ly/seac-lit-panel
 
Southeast Asian writers experience diaspora, and its losses, both within the region and without, both psychologically and socially, as both postcolonial subjects and citizens of a neoliberal order. How do they contend with the multiple manifestations of diaspora in their writing? Jee Leong Koh (Snow at 5 PM), Jim Pascual Agustin (Waking Up to the Pattern Left by a Snail Overnight), Lawrence Lacambra Ypil (The Experiment of the Tropics), and Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint (Names of Light) read from their work and converse with Reuven Pinnata on mapping the unmappable.
 
Jee Leong Koh is the winner of the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize in English fiction for Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an insignificant Japanese poet. He has published two books of poems with Carcanet (UK), including Steep Tea, named a Best Book of the Year by UK’s Financial Times. Originally from Singapore, Koh lives in New York City, where he heads the literary non-profit Singapore Unbound and the press Gaudy Boy.

Jim Pascual Agustin grew up in the Philippines. He has lived in Cape Town, South Africa, since 1994. His books have been published in the Philippines, the UK, and South Africa. His forthcoming book, Waking Up to the Pattern Left by a Snail Overnight, is due to be launched in Seattle and New York in 2023.

Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint is the author of the novel The End of Peril (Noemi Press, 2018) and a book of creative nonfiction Names for Light (2021), which won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and was a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award. She was born in Yangon, Myanmar and grew up in Bangkok, Thailand and San José, California. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Amherst College. 

Lawrence Lacambra Ypil is an award-winning poet and essayist whose work explores the intersection of text and image, and the role of material culture in the construction of cultural identity. Winner of the inaugural Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize, The Experiment of the Tropics was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Awards and longlisted for The Believer Book Awards. Born and raised in the Philippines, Ypil teaches creative writing at Yale-NUS College, Singapore.