KyiMayKaung

Burma, America, The World, Art, Literature, Political Economy through the eyes of a Permanent Exile. "We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the oppressed. Sometimes we must interfere. . . There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention . . . writers and poets, prisoners in so many lands governed by the left and by the right." Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Speech, 1986, Oslo. This entire site copyright Kyi May Kaung unless indicated otherwise.

Monday, June 05, 2023

Save the date--Himal Fiction Fest--schedule + Illustration for my short story Beast--based on Thiha Bahu legend https://www.himalmag.com/fiction-fest-next-generation-of-southasian-storytellers-june-2023/

My Reading on Zoom is June 19, 2023,

6-19-2023

7 to 8.30 PM IST (Indian Standard Time)

You can find out time equivalencies online.

See you there--our panel will include Kathmandu-based artist Manjil Rijal.

I am very excited about this as I am also an artist, but I don't do illustrations.

Manjil's illustration is exciting for me as although I wrote the story from the lion's point of view, from the illustration you can only see it from behind the Princess and all you can see are the Princess' shoulders in a silvery dress,

which I am sure now is ikat woven in the floating villages in Inle Lake, Shan States, Burma.

In reality, Inle Lake is silting up and drying up.

It is clogged with water hyacinth. My story is not set in Inle Lake--

Big thank you to Himal editor M. A. and copy editor S. who selected The Six of Us, and edited us and to Manjil.

I wrote Beast over approximately 10 years and no one, no one has noted a "fold" in the middle like a folded longyi (sarong).

This is the 2nd time I have been featured in an international/S. Asian/S.E. Asian small group.

The 1st was with House of World Culture in 2008 in Berlin, in person, as "a writer who dares to confront."

I always love these panels because we are curated in, so when we meet it is like meeting like-thinkers. No queasy junta double-agents. In Berlin we went on day cruises on River Spree, and sight-seeing and I went to Potsdam and wrote a story on that too--like the movie on the Spy Bridge.

The Panelists this time are all literary agents and publishers other than the featured writers.

This was designed, I understand, to showcase all of us and connect us.

Big, big Thank You to everyone involved.

Kyi May