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This month, we're celebrating turning ten and publishing ten zines/books by holding an exhibition at the Hin Between Festival!  See you there!
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 Here's the line up for this year's 10th anniversary anthology!
Poetry:
Fiction:
Non-Fiction:
Art:
Submitting your work anywhere is harrowing, especially when the theme seems so broad. How do you know what the editors are looking for? This year's NutMag submissions call says: We'd love to read about milestones big and small, good or bad, that have changed the trajectory of events - whether in the real world or in a fictional one. Tell us about real or imagined coming-of-age rituals, career and life achievements, or even the turn of a nation. But what does that really mean? We've asked the three editors of NutMag to tell us more. fiction: Wan Phing LimCould it be a literal kilometre marker on the road? An important achievement in your life, or perhaps an event that would change the course of your life forever? We are looking for stories that creatively and thoughtfully engage with the theme of milestones. We seek fresh perspectives that tug at the emotions, transport us to a different world, and that surprise us with unique takes on the theme. NonFiction: Anna Tan What makes you tick? Why are you living in Penang, or why did you leave? What moments or communities in Penang have moulded you to be who you are today? On a wider scale, what makes Penang tick? What formed her to be what she is today? Tell us about historical milestones: the migration of various communities and societies and the buildings that marked their presence, the laws that brought prosperity or chased it away, and the advancements that changed the way we live. We'd love personal essays or contemplations about your life and the history of this state. Try not to be too academic about it - yes, we want to know the facts, but we also want to know why the facts are important to YOU. Poetry: Yee Heng Yeh We often think of time as an uninterrupted flow, a single sentence too long to be read in one breath. Milestones, then, are a way to punctuate our lives. They let us pause, catch our breath, take stock of how far we’ve come, plan for the journey ahead, and most importantly, enjoy the view of here and now. Birthdays are a common one; so are anniversaries, achievements, or doing something for the first time. But really, any moment can be a milestone—all you have to do is stop and look. So: through your poem, what moment will you choose to mark as a milestone—whether it's for yourself, a relationship, or a place? We look forward to reading your creations!
Fiction, creative nonfiction, personal essays (max 5,000 words) and poems (max 60 lines) are welcome, in English or Bahasa Malaysia. All genres accepted. More info here: https://nutmagzine.weebly.com/submissions.html  Congratulations to all our writers! We're looking forward to seeing you in print.
If you're waiting for the Muara Writing Prize winners... that announcement will come in the middle of August!  We'll be launching the zine in October, so check back for more info!
As the northeast monsoon leaves and the southwest monsoon season arrives, MONSOON by Slowork Publishing is coming to Penang too!  What are documentary comics?We're familiar with documentaries, and we know what comics are, but what are documentary comics?
Based on real-life people and events, documentary comics are often regarded as "documentaries on paper", using graphic narratives instead of film to explore and document daily lives and social issues, regional tales and unspeakable experiences. Think of it as a graphic novel, but for non-fiction. Focusing on Southeast Asia, the exhibition will showcase 5 artists from the "Monsoon" series - Lefty Julian and NOvia Shin from Malaysia; Adoor Yeh, 61Chi, and Tseng Yao-Ching from Taiwan - offering a rare platform for discovering regional tales and talents. Happy new year! We've been making some changes around here, so here's what you can expect from MYWriters Penang and NutMag zine in 2023! Meet our new editors Since 2016, each year's zine has been a team effort. This meant that the team would read all the submissions and vote on the 10 pieces to make it into print. Final decisions and editorial work then fell to Anna Tan. This year, we are expanding the team by introducing our Fiction Editor, Wan Phing Lim and our Poetry Editor, Yee Heng Yeh. Anna will still be looking at the creative nonfiction submissions. We're hoping that this will further refine the curation and editing process to bring you the best writings from Penang. Opening to blog submissions With these new editors on board, we've decided to utilise this blog space a little more! You can now submit your short stories, creative nonfiction, and reviews (up to 1,000 words) and poetry (up to 20 lines). There's no submission deadline or theme for this; entries will be read on a rolling basis, probably once a month. Any selected pieces will be posted at a rate of once a month as well. Note: to increase your chances of getting selected, go look up our editors' profiles and see what they like! Penang Writers Workshops
It's been a while since we had one of these! We're still working out the details, but we're planning on running our writer's workshops again, building from our previous workshops and the Chevening Writers Series. Keep your eyes peeled for more info soon!  We're launching our 2022 zine at Hin Bus Depot this Saturday!
Come listen to Anna Tan, JY Tan, Miriam Devaprasana, Wilson Khor W.H. and Yee Heng Yeh share their writing inspirations and read from their work. The launch event itself will be from 3pm to 4pm, but our MYWriters booth will be open throughout the Hin Market hours from 11am to 5pm. Come early, have lunch, hang out with our writers, and get them to sign your zines. (And buy some books too!) See you soon!  Thanks to all who submitted this year!
We hope to see more of your work in the years to come. These are strange times we live in-- we’ve stopped believing in things that happen. The pandemic has been going on for more than a year, after all. Still, I think it was almost a shock to realise how quickly we got used to things. And when I say “we”, I mean “I”, of course, but it’s easier to talk about these things if you pretend you’re not the only one. Though I don’t doubt that there are others out there who feel the same. As the number of cases (and deaths) ascended--rather steeply at one point--it became almost surreal to think about the immensity, the scope of tragedy happening every day, and the way we’re barely able to engage emotionally with the facts. I don’t mean this as a castigation; perhaps desensitisation and detachment are necessary tools, at times, by which we make sense of the world without losing our minds. Plus, against this backdrop of disease and isolation, the usual injustices—police brutality, homelessness, fatally shoddy infrastructure, the stark shortage of effective, compassionate leadership—seem more pronounced than ever. But I wonder if some things have always been this bad, even before the virus. And it’s only that our heightened sensitivity to the news these days, and the pervading sense of general despair, have made us more receptive to the darker side of reality. Receptive, yes, but somehow, at the same time, in disbelief. If there are passengers on the train, that’s only a throng of ghosts. If there’s a light in the hospital window, it’s just the dark’s blinking eye. If there are any who have died, they must still be teetering on the edge between life and afterlife. Hence, this poem. But as with anything, its bleak, cynical outlook is only one side of the story. There have been instances of goodwill. Grief, when necessary. Healthy dissent, and efforts to reclaim justice. Enough that the world hasn’t earned the world’s end, as Szymborska puts it. There may also be some small comfort in the fact that if things have always been this terrible…well, at least some of us have still made it this far. We can choose how we face this. If nothing else, we bear witness to what goes on in this world. And that’s not nothing. How else could we have stood here
and watched this world do what it’s always done? |
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