ESEA Lit Fest: On community and recognition

ESEA Lit Fest: On community and recognition

The idea of strength in numbers is well-worn, but it’s a cliche for a reason: there’s power in the collective, in mutual recognition and support. We became friends at Faber, back in 2017, bonded through being the only Asian faces in the room. Famously, publishing is a homogenous industry, and spaces to connect over a shared heritage - even if it’s an entire continent wide; Joanna moved to the UK from Korea, whilst Maria was born in the Philippines - are rare.

In the years since, we’ve gotten to know the other Asian faces at industry events: bonding over being mistaken for one another; over off-kilter comments made in meetings; and more joyfully, over the books by our favourite East and South East Asian writers that we loved and held as literary totems. We swapped favourite passages from the greats: Elaine Castillo, whose How to Read Now lambasts with wit and rage how ‘we largely end up going to writers of colour to learn the specific - and go to white writers to feel the universal’; Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, whose Dictee asks us to resist the imperative to turn suffering into an easily digestible narrative; Cathy Park Hong, who dissects with candour the ‘racialised range of emotions’ she experiences as an Asian American woman in Minor Feelings.

In recognising how many people were going through such similar experiences in this industry, often atomised as the only non-white face in the room, we decided to gather: and the ESEA Publishing Network was born. At the start, in September 2022, we all fit around a pub garden table. Tongues firmly in cheek, we played an icebreaker game of ‘what’s the most/least Asian thing about you?’ Answers ranged from “I bulk buy instant ramen” (nods of recognition) to “I’m terrible at karaoke” and “I wear shoes in the house” (gasps of shock! Disgust! Horror!).

There was such power in this sharing, and the experience of seeing peoples’ faces light up in recognition, in yes, I felt that too, or that resonates with me, was amazing. We formalised the ESEA Publishing Network into a space for solidarity, a collective voice, and to amplify the work of ESEA writers and publishing professionals doing incredible work in the UK today. The response was unbelievable, and within a year we grew from those pub trips to two hundred people on the roof garden of Hachette’s Carmelite House, with authors R. F. Kuang, Vanessa Chan, and Kaliane Bradley reading in the glorious sunshine to a rapt audience.

Along the way, we’ve been inspired by the very best - Besea.n’s work launching ESEA Heritage Month, Helena Lee’s East Side Voices platform and eponymous book that was an expansive celebration of the richness and diversity of ESEA identity in Britain, Jenny Lau’s ESEA Pot Lucks at Hackney Chinese Community Services, and the Black Writers Guild. Our work has been supported by Hachette and their employee network THRIVE, Paper Literary Agency and the Bagri Foundation, with creative writing and translation workshops hosted by Women’s Prize Discoveries and the literary agencies Curtis Brown and Conville & Walsh. We’ve also partnered with publishers like 4th Estate to spotlight unmissable debuts and with Tilted Axis Press, Fitzcarraldo Editions and PalFest for a Writers for Palestine fundraiser.

In January 2023, we announced ESEA Lit Fest in the Guardian - an entire literary festival dedicated to East and South East Asian books, the first of its kind in the UK. With their longstanding commitment to international literature and based near the heart of things in Chinatown, Foyles were the natural partners and their energy, creativity and enthusiasm for this project has been unparalleled. Together we compiled a line-up of our dreams and tickets sold out within days.

It felt like a landmark moment for ESEA literature in the UK: throughout September, customers shared their recommendations on the ESEA Reads Tree designed by Kenn Lam in Foyles’ entrance, with ESEA books displays winding their way up the staircase to the auditorium where we hosted events with the likes of Will Harris, Tania Branigan, Nicola Dinan, Jeremy Chan and Troy Cabida.

When the big day came, the atmosphere in the room was electric. For us, that’s the most special part: seeing the community manifest, of audiences who get it, with questions that go beyond identity to prompt ideas from the panels that we’re still quoting to this day. Whilst the festival is rooted in identity (it is called ESEA Lit Fest after all, it does what it says on the tin), we wanted to create this space for ESEA authors to be liberated to speak beyond the bounds of identity politics.

There was such a positive energy and laughter throughout the day, even through some of the more serious subjects – the laughter of recognition. The audience laughed when Mandy Yin said ‘my father never said he loved me but he did cut my fruit for me’ - there was a shared cultural understanding of what this non-verbal expression of care means. Being diasporan, your whole life is comparing and contrasting your cultural origins and experience against the customs of the country you live in.

Bookstagrammer WhatSallyReadNext said “it was one of the very few occasions in my life so far where I was in a room with the majority filled by people who were from the East and South East Asian community” and Helena Lee described it as “an amazing and historic occasion… It was so meaningful to have the luxury of that space to just be without the limits of expectation that can come with being ESEA or a person of colour, to explore messiness and complexities and joy through the lens of literature.”

All of this to say - we can’t wait to do it all again this year with a stellar line-up at Foyles (including Tash Aw, Romalyn Ante and Thuận, to name a few) and a ridiculously exciting expansion to the Southbank Centre for our finale with superstar comedian Phil Wang talking to Zing Tseng about comedy, storytelling and being from two worlds at once. We’re incredibly proud of the community that’s grown from a spark of recognition across a boardroom all those years ago. ESEA Lit Fest is a celebration of connection and the undeniable ESEA talent that exists in today’s literary landscape, and it’s open to absolutely everyone. It’s going to be a weekend to remember - we hope you’ll join us.