Scholarship Offer: The Search for Asia’s Next Top Writer in English

The Department of English at City University of Hong Kong is pleased to announce a one-year full Tuition Scholarship, to be awarded to a 2010 candidate for our new, international, low-residency Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing. The winner will be the applicant who submits the sample of creative writing that demonstrates the greatest potential for success as a professional literary author. Applicants in any genre are eligible, as long as they meet the acceptance criteria for this postgraduate degree. There is no restriction as to country of residence, age or nationality.

At City University, we seek to develop Asia's future writers, and this scholarship is offered to attract the most talented writers to our programme. This summer, we begin our first class of writers for the MFA in Creative Writing specialising in Asian Writing in English, the first programme in the world to offer this specialty. Based in the English department, the innovative 45-credit, two-year programme will accept a limited number of students in creative non-fiction, fiction and poetry. The degree is benchmarked to international standards for the MFA. The Hong Kong native author Xu Xi assisted in its development and joined the Department as their first Writer-in-Residence on March 1.

"We anticipate the majority of applicants to be from Asia," Xu says, "but many writers in the West, both of Asian and non-Asian ethnicity, are increasingly drawn to Asia, especially China. They're not always best served by MFA programmes in the West where there’s little focus on either a contemporary or historical Asian perspective or Asian literature." The faculty will all be writers who 'know Asia, live Asia, read Asia, write Asia' as the programme’s advertising says. The top criterion for admission will be the quality of creative work.

This initiative is part of an overall strategy to develop the creative curriculum at the university. Professor Kingsley Bolton, Head of English at City University says, "Our English Department is a very young one, but probably one of the most dynamic and innovative departments of its kind in Asia. In the next few years, we are aiming to make the English Department here a leading centre for creative writing, drama, and cultural studies, not only for Hong Kong but also for the whole of the Asian region." The MFA is generally considered a professional degree, qualifying students to work in professions where good writing skills are required, as well as providing the groundwork for an international writing and publishing career.

The low-residency graduate degree model is relatively new in Asia. A long-established pedagogical model in the U.S., such programmes are especially suited for the creative arts. In particular, this programme is ideal for working professionals who cannot afford to spend two years as full-time graduate students in a traditional writing programme. Structured for individualised learning, students work via distance learning with writing mentors on a one-on-one basis during the semesters, and attend brief 'residencies' at the university two to three times a year. The low faculty-to-student ratio allows for intensive feedback on the student’s work and approximates the professional editor-writer relationship.

The first residency is scheduled for summer 2010. The internationally renowned novelist Timothy Mo will be Visiting Writer and the faculty writers for the 2010 class features an international cast from Hong Kong, India, the U.K, Canada and the U.S., with connections and roots in China, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere. The writers include Tina Chang, Marilyn Chin, Luis Francia, Robin Hemley, Justin Hill, Sharmistha Mohanty, James Scudamore, Ravi Shankar, Jess Row and Madeleine Thien. For applications, please visit http://www.english.cityu.edu.hk/MFA. For further information, please email mfawriting@cityu.edu.hk or call Xu Xi at ++852.3442.8732.

March 11, 2010

Call for submissions - short stories

Dr. Emma Dawson, "works at the intersection of postcolonial writing, pedagogy and the emergent field of World Englishes literature. Her recent study addressed the teaching of World Englishes literature in schools in England." She is involved in a project which is set to publish 8 anthologies of new writing in English from around the world. Cameroon and Nigeria (Nov 2009) are out, Uganda and Kenya will follow, Malaysia, Singapore, India and a Caribbean nation after that.

Below is a request for submissions from Malaysia and Singapore (There will be two separate anthologies.)

- Word count: 3000 - 8000 words
- There is no theme, only 'Malaysia' or 'Singapore'.
- This is adult fiction (in the sense that it is not 'children's fiction').
- The work must be written in English (i.e. not translated from another language) and must be written by a resident of Malaysia (or Singapore) (this is not a collection of diaspora writing).
- The story must be 'new' in the sense that it is 'unpublished in book form' - this makes life much easier in terms of 'rights'. (We can accept submissions which have been previously published in magazines if necessary.)
- Please send submissions by email to worldlits@googlemail.com, attached as a Microsoft Word document (saved as a 1997-2003 version please) and formatted as follows:

- Name of author (Times New Roman, 12pt, bold, left justified).
- Contact address, telephone number and email (Times New Roman, 12pt, bold, left justified).
- Title of short story (Times New Roman, 14pt, bold, centred, underlined).
- Body text (Times New Roman, 12pt, justified, 1.5 line spacing, black).
- Page numbers and name of author on every page please.
- Word count at the end of the story (Bold, left justified).

Maximum of two entries per person please.
Please submit by January 31st, 2010. (The closing date has been extended to 28 February 2010.)

Hungry in Guangzhou

Guangzhou has intimidated me from the moment I arrived. I feel out of place buying a common lunch of soupy noodles although the food and restaurant setting are familiar. Cantopop alternating with Mandarin chart-toppers on the radio cuts through the hustle bustle sounds. A press of hungry office workers crowds the counter. The people wend their way between plastic chairs and tables. The smell, the heat, the bodies, the noise and the oily floor don't faze me. I'm smooth, I'm cool, I tell myself.

The clatter echoes around the tiled walls. I make my approach and say, "May I order, please?" The man looks at me in disdain and answers in Cantonese. He's asking me impatiently to tell him the type of noodle I want and what I want with them. I can understand that much. Boiling soup in a stainless steel cauldron hisses and gurgles, laughing at my discomfort.

The choices are laid out on the counter. I recognise liver, minced pork, meat balls, intestines, tripe and two types of vegetable, green and white. The glass case holding the noodles has a menu of Chinese characters reminding me of my illiteracy. I point at the balled-up yellow noodles. Those. I swing my finger around the assortment of meats. Everything. I point at the liver and waggle my index finger. "Everything but that," I say.

He shrugs and gives me the sideways glance I am so used to by now in this crowded city. A look I am convinced says, I have no time for the likes of you. Maybe it is just my imagination. Look, I want to say, I understand you and I hate liver but the words in Cantonese stay silent on my cowardly tongue. Perhaps it is just my insecurity in this place chock-a-block full of Chinese people who look like me. They speak Cantonese and rapid fire Mandarin. I just can't keep up.

I look for a place to sit. I smile at the pretty woman sitting across me who holds a straw in her tall glass of coffee. When the steam from my bowl fogs up my glasses, she disappears and I can't tell if she smiled back. I push my glasses up on my forehead and I can see the liver slices in there, slightly pinkish with little holes. I slide the bamboo chopsticks out of the paper envelope and snap them apart smartly. See, I know how to do this. I flex my fingers and the chopsticks meet at the tip without crossing. Watch me, I can use my chopsticks with grace. I fish out a slice of liver, dip it in soy sauce and put it into my mouth. Look, I'm not afraid of half-cooked liver. I gag a little. The texture is awful, like rotten meat and I hate it. I try to swallow without grimacing. Hello, I am Chinese like you. Hello, look at me, but the noodle seller ignores me and laughs with another customer. The pretty woman looks away pointedly.

Here, where my surname was sown, I am an impostor. Why doesn't my blood quicken in recognition of my ancestral homeland? I slurp the soup. It's good and I wonder about MSG.

On the three-hour flight back to Kuala Lumpur, I work some more, crunching numbers on the laptop. I'm dead tired but I've earned my right to feel good about a very successful working trip. It is night when I touchdown and I'm dying for a hot drink. I find an all-nighter, an Indian Muslim restaurant, and I pile a plate full of rice, tandoori chicken and pappadoms. How much, I ask the dark-skinned man standing at the end of the steel buffet counter. Six-fifty, he says. Drink, he asks?

Cham peng, I say. Two little Chinese words and the man who does not look like me knows exactly what I want. He brings me an iced drink that is milk tea mixed with coffee. I laugh with relief, knowing that here I am home.

My blood doesn't quicken here either. Perhaps it's the MSG in the tandoori.

The Coroner's Omission

The Coroner's Omission by Anna Couzet.

It is all he could do. The coroner was drunk.

The picture looked black and white, if it were not for the trickle of clotted and almost dried blood around the toe. A dangling foot from a gurney, delicate, lean and young. Dead, though. A little bit of a leg follows, not much muscle, bony, rigid. It might be a female, no hair so far, or it could be a young boy barely out of childhood. I found this picture on my way out from the hospital. It might have slipped from a medical file. There was no name attached, only a number. The white square tiles on the floor and walls as a background, make this image strong and appealing. Almost a Michelangelo Pieta. The diaphanous shine of the skin, once flushed with pulsating and throbbing life, seems to have taken on the purity and smoothness of a Carrara polished marble. Now, its rests, incognito in the hands of death, once putrid, eaten away, will be forgotten implacably.

I approach a nurse passing by. She is in a hurry; the Christmas party at the doctors' quarters is in full swing. She cannot be bothered. And with a few polite words, she tells me to redirect my enquiry at the desk in charge of guarding the house while everybody is merry. As she pushes a door a few steps away, a maelstrom of sounds, voices, laughs and carols comes rushing into the empty corridor. I am left with the anonymous picture, an unidentified corpse, a body vacant of its soul in my hands. On the spur of the moment, tired of having gone through another chemo, I am almost ready to leave this picture where I had found it: on the bare, cold, sanitized and spotless floor of this hospital. It is Christmas, or soon it will be. I have lost touch with the celebrations of life. Too much pain lately, with this crab eating away at me. Thoughts of happier times come flooding into my mind as if life's resiliency wanted to intrude into this gloomy moment. I sigh. It is not over yet. Not for me. I push back a few tears, hold the picture still in front of me, and silently make a promise: I will bring you back to where you belong. Life is not finished with you too.

The front desk of that section of the hospital is hidden behind a huge board holding seasons greeting cards. A blinking cord of tiny bulbs snakes its way around words of praise and good will. I hear muffled sounds coming from behind. A young nurse and what seems to be an intern are looking through a hardcore magazine. Nudes, fleshy body parts, suggestive positions, butts, oversized breasts, hairy cunts, enlarged penises, makes me shriek at the sole view of this outrageous display. Life is for the living. And I am in between. They gather themselves at once.

'May I help you,' the young, embarrassed nurse says. I gather the little strength I have left, and bring forward the picture. 'I found this in the corridor on my way out the chemo ward.' She does not seem to be much concerned at first; I guess she has not recovered yet from that shameful moment. Indeed, I look aghast, lost, demeaned, drained, exhausted. Too many emotions have shaken this broken body. The male intern grabs the picture from my hand as if he wanted to take away from me a big burden. He hopes I will show some improving signs. I am not in the pink of health, for sure. My face is the colour of ashes. 'Where did you find this?' he enquires as if he had not heard when I spoke to the nurse. I guess he too needs to adjust. 'On the floor,' I reply dryly. 'Ah, I see ... Poor boy, another one, another victim of a drug overdose. I am sorry if this has caused you any trouble. I may have lost this picture while bringing the file to my boss.' He seems to be sincerely concerned. I dare to ask for more: 'What happened? Do you know the boy? Where is he now?' He comes out from behind the desk and takes me gently by the elbow. 'Let's have a seat over there. Shall we?' I let him guide me as if I were without will, unable to choose any direction. I take some time before picking up a seat, split between the black and dark blue chairs. He does not hesitate. Black, blue or any other colour is not a priority to him. Unlike me, anguish has not planted its claws into his brain. 'Well, we are waiting for the next of kin to claim his body. I took this picture while my boss, the coroner was trying to assess the cause of death. We get those overdosed bodies on a regular basis. I am still not comfortable around them. Something is not right. To die so young, this way, while we try incessantly to save lives hanging by a thread.' 'Yes' I say, 'I understand.'

I feel empty as if life had decided to take a stroll while I try to make up my mind about this strange and awkward situation. We are in a hospital, I remind myself. It is time for you to go home. I am not in a hurry to go home. There is no one waiting for me. I look into the intern eyes whom by now has reconciled himself to the fact that life has its own ways. In a flash, without knowing why, I grab the picture from his hand. 'Can I keep it?' I almost beg him. He looks puzzled. 'Uh ... why? Is there anything else that I can help you with?' He gets up, disappears for a while and brings me back a paper cup full of water. I take a few sips, and I slowly get up. 'Let me assist you to your car,' he offers. 'Yes, please.' We walk silently, side by side. There is not much to say. The pain is mine to bear.

I notice, on the way to the taxi stand, signs of hope, shreds of despair, torn faces in pain, shattered hope, shrieks of a child holding a colourful batch of balloons, a mother smile.

As a taxi alights by the entrance, I seize the intern's hand. 'Thank you,' I say 'for the picture. This is my Pieta.'