MPH Breakfast Club with Preeta SAMARASAN & Chiew-Siah TEI

“COFFEE, CURRY PUFFS AND BOOKS:
WHAT A TANTALISING COMBINATION!”

The 15th MPH Breakfast Club for Litbloggers on October 25, 2008 (Saturday), at 11.30a.m.-1.00p.m., will be featuring two Malaysian début novelists: Preeta Samarasan and Chiew-Siah Tei.

Preeta Samarasan is the author of Evening Is the Whole Day (Houghton Mifflin/Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, 2008). She is at the moment working on her second novel, a story about a group of people living in a utopian community in Cameron Highlands, Malaysia. She has a story in the forthcoming collection, Urban Odysseys: KL Stories (MPH Publishing, 2009).

Samarasan was born and raised in Malaysia and moved to the U.S. for her high-school education. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan, where an early version of her novel won the Avery and Jule Hopwood First Novel Award. She recently won the Asian American Writer’s Workshop short-story award. She lives in France. (Read Sharon Bakar’s interview with Preeta Samarasan.)

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Chiew-Siah Tei was born and raised in Tampin, a small town in southern Malaysia. A bilingual writer, she has won a series of awards for her Chinese prose, including the Huo Zong International Chinese Fiction Award. She wrote the script for Night Swimmer, which won Best Short Film at the Vendome International Film Festival, and her play, Three Thousand Troubled Threads, was staged at the Edinburgh International Festival. She left for the U.K. to study in 1994 and now lives in Glasgow, Scotland. Her first novel, Little Hut of Leaping Fishes (Picador, 2008), was longlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007. It’s a sweeping tale of sibling rivalry, cultural upheaval and the indelible power of blood ties, set against the dying days of Imperial China.

Eric Forbes and Tan May Lee will be introducing Preeta Samarasan and Chiew-Siah Tei respectively while Janet Tay will be moderating the session.

Date October 25, 2008 (Saturday)
Time 11.30a.m.-1.00p.m.
Venue MPH Bangsar Village II Lot 2F-1 (2nd Floor), Bangsar Village II, No. 2 Jalan Telawi 1, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Phone (603) 2287 3600

Food and refreshments will be served
All lovers of literature are most welcome

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Preeta Samarasan and Chiew-Siah Tei will both be doing a reading at readings@seksan at 3.30p.m. on the same day. Seksan Design is at No. 67 Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar, 59100 Kuala Lumpur

Photograph of Preeta Samarasan courtesy of Miriam Berkley