Mary-Jane Newton’s poetry and reviews were published in Issue 13 of Cha.
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Kristine Ong Muslim’s A Roomful of Machines, Mani Rao’s Ghostmasters, Sherry Quan Lee’s Chinese Blackbird, Melody S. Gee’s Each Crumbling House, Robert Raymer’s Tropical Affairs, Shimao Shinzo and Madeleine Marie Slavick’s Something Beautiful Might Happen, Dimitris Lyacos’s Poena Damni, Z213: Exit, Tiziano Fratus’s Creaturing, Jack Kornfield’s The Buddha is Still Teaching, Khế Iêm’s (ed.) Poetry Narrates: An Anthology of Vietnamese New Formalism Poetry, O Thiam Chin’s Under the Sun, Karen Llagas’s Archipelago Dust, Sweta Srivastava Vikram’s Because All is Not Lost, Anindita Sengupta’s City of Water, Edwin Thumboo’s (ed.) Fifty on 50, Xu Xi’s Habit of a Foreign Sky, and Rahna Reiko Rizzuto’s Hiroshima in the Morning.
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What is it like being a writer in a place like Hong Kong? Is it a nurturing environment?Hong Kong has so much going on: the Hong Kong Writers’ Circle, established in 1991, continues to support local writers and the members of which founded or were and still are members of many other literary groups in Hong Kong; the University of Hong Kong and the City University of Hong Kong are offering Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing programmes; the Hong Kong Women in Publishing Society organises regular events open to the public and The Hong Kong International Literary Festival brings together local and international writers in March in October each year;1 there are English publishers such as Chameleon Press, Haven Books, Proverse and Signal 8 Press; there are dedicated people who run regular poetry readings at Joyce Is Not Here, Kubrick and Peel Fresco Music Lounge and the group Poetry OutLoud has been around for a long time; there are English publications such as Muse Magazine and Culture that often cover literary elements. Of course, Asia Literary Review, Yuan Yang and Renditions consistently publish excellent creative works over the years.
Writers in the city should take the initiative and connect with other people. And I hope in some small ways Cha is helping foster an encouraging writing environment in Hong Kong as well.
Do check out the newly-launched Hong Kong English Literature Database, prepared by Professor Elaine Ho and her team of contributors from the School of English, the University of Hong Kong. The website contains a rich corpus of anglophone writing about Hong Kong; short summaries and critical comments on more than 100 titles are provided on the site. You can see here for a detailed introduction to the project. Also of relevance is the article “Language Policy, ‘Asia’s World City’ and Anglophone Hong Kong Writing”.
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Cha 
