Making space for an East and Southeast Asian Lit Fest
Our reading diet is a throwback to our childhoods, and mine was filled with books that had nothing to do with my lived experiences as a child of the East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) diaspora. I want my children and theirs to be seen and heard, and that’s why I decided to infuse my stories with East and Southeast Asian characters, lore and myths, whimsy and magic for young children, says Eva Wong Nava.
I
’M not the only ESEA person living in the diaspora that feels this way. After some discussion and agreement amongst a few ESEA creatives in the publishing industry, it was thought that a lit fest for British ESEA authors and creatives would be a good way to build bridges and promote ESEA voices. So, I co-organised an ESEA Authors Collective lit fest in collaboration with SOAS for the ESEA Heritage Month in September, 2023. The response was overwhelming, and we are back again this year for the second iteration, now known as the ESEA @SOAS Lit Fest. It’s important that we own our narratives, and the ESEA @SOAS Lit Fest does just this. I’m Eva Wong Nava, the author of I
Love Chinese New Year (Scholastic, 2022), amongst other children’s books. I am the first British East and Southeast Asian author in the UK to write a nested narrative of this ancient annual lunar new year festival, and it became a bestseller within the first weeks of its release, indicating a demand for an own voices children’s story. To celebrate the 2024 lunar new year, CBeebies invited Carlos Gu from Strictly Come Dancing to read I Love Chinese New Year to the nation, further pointing to the need for inclusive and diverse stories read at bedtime.
This spotlight meant the world to the British ESEA community. For the first time in recent history, British ESEA children are able to celebrate a familiar family tradition and festival with other
British children all over the nation through CBeebies Bedtime Stories. It looks like we are beginning to own our narratives as the ESEA Authors Collective continue to band together in support of each other. The ESEA @ SOAS Lit Fest is a grass roots effort – organised by authors and illustrators of East and Southeast Asian heritage who met through The Bubble Tea Writer’s Network, founded by children’s book author, Maisie Chan. Our team come from all walks in writing and illustrating – writing for all ages in various forms and genres including literary, fantasy, speculative and science fiction, and crime. This is an exciting literary festival that celebrates the creative efforts of British East and Southeast Asian talent, that we hope to grow and get bigger and better each year. For this year, there really is something for everyone! In the kid lit space, we have Maisie Chan, Candy Gourlay, Natelle Quek, Sojung Kim-McCarthy and Nadia Mikail. Generously supported by Inclusive Books for Children, there is a special panel discussing the power of inclusion in children’s books. For those who enjoy fantastical and heraldic animals, children’s author Anne Chen is chairing a panel on Myth and Mystery, exploring other cool bestiary in ESEA stories for children and adults. Eliza Chan, author of adult fantasy, Fathomfolk, joins this panel, along with Mina Ikemoto Ghosh, author of Hyo The Hellmaker.
Crime writer, Tania Tay, winner of publisher Headline’s inaugural Modern Stories Open Submissions Initiative and author of The Other
Eva Wong Nava.
Woman is one of the panellists in ESEA Women In Crime that includes Callie Kazumi, debut author of Cuckoo. This is chaired by Winnie Li, author of Complicit and A Dark Chapter. Adding an event missing from last year, there is a comics jam during the lunch hour, allowing for a fun creative session for those who want to try their hand at creating comics and also to meet some ESEA illustrators, like Natelle Quek and The Mollusc Dimension. There will also be a poetry reading and discussion panel that includes SOAS students and poets, including China-born and UK- based Hongwei Bao.
Autumn-Winter 2024
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