When: Feb­ru­ary 2009
Where: Kuala Lumpur

Help­ing Malay­sian writers tell the stor­ies of their lives in their city, UK writers Jeremy Shel­don and Sarah But­ler were in Kuala Lum­pur for two weeks, run­ning work­shops for over 200 aspir­ing and advanced writers.

The work­shops were part of the cre­at­ive writ­ing series the Brit­ish Coun­cil organ­ised in part­ner­ship with MPH Book­stores and London-based Spread the Word from 11–20 Feb­ru­ary 2009, aimed at encour­aging par­ti­cipants to derive inspir­a­tion from their sur­round­ings for the pro­duc­tion of writ­ten work and refine their skills through innov­at­ive activ­it­ies that cre­at­ively and sens­it­ively engage them with their cit­ies and with the people who inhabit these spaces.

The local writers took part in a wide range of exer­cises that included auto­bi­o­graph­ical fic­tion, tap­ping into the dra­matic sub­stance of their own exper­i­ences to trans­form into stor­ies, and cre­at­ing a sense of place by explor­ing city iden­tity and exper­i­ment­ing with giv­ing the city a biography.

One of the par­ti­cipants shared their exper­i­ence: “I loved it, espe­cially the exer­cise where we had to walk around the city by ourselves. It was inspir­ing and fun.”

UK writer and tutor Sarah But­ler, who also runs a con­sultancy to explore the area of cre­at­ive writ­ing and urban regen­er­a­tion, Urb­an­Words, found the exper­i­ence in Malay­sia a reward­ing one: “It was a delight to work with so many tal­en­ted and enthu­si­astic writers in Kuala Lum­pur. The visit was excep­tion­ally well organ­ised and sup­por­ted by the Brit­ish Coun­cil. As someone par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in writ­ing and place, I really enjoyed get­ting to know Kuala Lum­pur through the words of its writers.”

The second phase of City of Stor­ies will com­mence later in the year, lead­ing to the pub­lic­a­tion of an antho­logy of short stor­ies by the work­shop par­ti­cipants. At the same time we will con­tinue to work in col­lab­or­a­tion to develop a com­munity of writers and read­ers with the book­shop as the locus, and lit­er­at­ure as the medium for bring­ing people together and for high­light­ing the viva­city and diversity in the city.

Organ­ised by Brit­ish Coun­cil Malay­sia, MPH and Spread the Word

Con­tact: sunitha [dot] janamo­hanan [at] brit­ish­coun­cil [dot] org [dot] my