I had never heard of the George Town Literary Festival (GTLF) until the September 2025 edition of Writers SA’s e-news found its way into my inbox. Writers SA announced an opportunity to provide a bursary to assist with costs to attend the festival. This immediately piqued my interest, especially as I had visited George Town previously and loved it and was keen to return one day. So, I thought I best find out about the festival and see if this was something I could apply for.
The GTLF was founded in 2011 and is held each year on the final weekend of November to provide a space for reflection, dialogue, and creative exchange, presented within the conviction that Penang’s future, and Malaysia’s future (and I would add humanity’s future), depends on an intellectually curious, philosophically bold and globally connected citizenry. According to Ooi Kee Beng the GTLF Festival Director, GTLF celebrates the centrality of Literature in deepening human civilisation and human values, reminding us that knowledge is collectively generated, and that bold discussion, imagination and articulation are tools for liberation and growth. These are the true means of society building, of people building, and of world building, and Penang Institute is proud to play a central role in sustaining this spirit of conversation, creativity, and cultural exchange.[1]
I should acknowledge that Ooi Kee Beng is also the Executive Director of the Penang Institute and it has organised the GTLF for the last two years.
The theme for the 2025 festival was Urban Myths and Memories, exploring the stories, secrets, and recollections that shape city life, delving into how myths, both personal and collective, are born in urban spaces, and how memory anchors us amid constant change. The festival invited reflection on how cities remember, forget, and reinvent themselves through narrative.
With my background as a Town Planner coupled with the fact the values and theme of the festival resonate with some of the themes and ideas I am exploring in my own book … I was hooked. I submitted my application with the expectation that it wouldn’t be successful, however much to my surprise and delight, Writers SA offered me the opportunity to attend the GTLF, and for this I am eternally grateful.
Before I share my reflections and insights from GTLF I would like to make some acknowledgements.
I acknowledge the Erawirung people as the Traditional Custodians of the skies, lands and waters of the place where I live and wrote this blog. I honour their culture and care for Country.
I acknowledge the Wadawurrung people as the Traditional Custodians of the skies, land and waters of the place where I was born. I honour their culture and care for Country.
I extend my respect and gratitude to all First People of Australia, for their care and custodianship of this incredible continent that I call home. I honour their survival for millennia despite it all.
I acknowledge that spiritual connection to Country is vital for our wellbeing and resilience.
I acknowledge my role in truth telling in caring for Country.
I extend my respect and gratitude to the people of Malaysia, in particular George Town, Penang, for their warm hospitality, and acknowledge their cultural connection, care and custodianship of the land upon which the festival was held.
Please read this blog in the spirit it was shared; with love, compassion, and a desire to learn. I wish to state that in no way am I wanting to impose myself on others with my writing, but I feel a deep desire to share my thoughts and inspirations with whoever may be reading this, and I am very grateful that you are, I warmheartedly wish you all the very best.
I strive to be a better person each day but sometimes I am not. I wish to live in a society that sustainably exists within our planetary limits and that has a loving heart at its core. Hopefully my writing will go some way to showing why this is important and how we can achieve this.
I hope this blog inspires some reflection and hope and who knows, it might even encourage you to attend the next George Town Literary Festival.
Day 1 – Friday 28th November
Despite a long day of travel yesterday, I was awake at stupid o’clock due to my body still being on South Australian time, hence I arrived as the organisers and stall owners in the marketplace were still setting up and getting ready for the day. But I do love arriving at these events early and feeling the change in energy and rise of anticipation as more people arrive.
The festival kicked off with the Opening Ceremony at the UAB Hall. We were welcomed by Ooi Kee Beng the Festival Director. He set the theme of the festival by speaking about the importance of history, myths and memories and the need to understand history as others will use it to support their own interest.
He also said, a city is not only a place, but also a story told through buildings, place and experience. A city can be seen as the archive of humanity. To me, this idea goes to the essence of town planning, as well as place-based community development[2], which starts with people’s stories and experiences. He also spoke passionately about Penang, a place where heritage, modernity and culture co-exist.
The keynote address was presented by Madelaine Thien. Her address set a thoughtful tone for the festival, talking about legacy being a result of memory and asking the question, “What do we do with the space between the stories we want and the stories we have?” There is such calmness to Madelaine that draws me to her. Having listened to her today I am looking forward to attending her session tomorrow.
There was also a reading of letters that traced Penang’s growth and honoured the power of memory and the written word. The session concluded with paul catafago reading his poem, ‘Remember Us’ which was accompanied by a captivating dance interpretation by Luvenia Kalia and Dr Mumtaz Begum Backer. This was really powerful and a reminder that remembering is a small act of rebellion and for Palestinians it is a way to maintain their identity in the face of the slow, persistent work of colonisation and erasure.
Eksentrika wrapped this up best when they said, Their insistent plea to be seen and not forgotten found a devastating echo in paul catafago’s poem Remember Us, which he read aloud at the George Town Literary Festival (GTLF) 2025. By the final lines, the Palestinian-Lebanese poet had broken down in sobs. In that moment, Urban Myths and Memories — the theme of this year’s GTLF — felt painfully and vividly alive.[3]
The opening ceremony set the bar high for my expectations for the remainder of the festival and I can’t wait to see, hear and feel what transpires over the next three days. My initial impression of GTLF is it has a much more formal vibe than Ubud Writers & Readers Festival (UWRF) or ChangeFest. But upon further reflection that may have more to do with the venue and sitting in university meeting and lecture rooms, albeit there are more people in suits here. Despite this perceived formality it didn’t translate to punctual time keeping as the opening ceremony went overtime and by the time it finished the next session I wanted to attend had already commenced.
I wandered over to the WOU Reading Room for the book launch of Pritchard’s of Penang: Enterprise, Secession, and Murder by Marcus Langdon. This is Marcus’ eleventh book and coupled with numerous articles on Penang, it is said that Penang’s history runs in his blood.
Pritchard & Co. Ltd. (1888-1959) is a name which has almost faded from memory in Malaysia however they were a key player in the growth of retailing during the best and worst of times in British colonial Malaya. They were the first widely diversified department store with its main store in Penang.
I was looking forward to this session to learn more about this aspect of the history of Penang. I have become much more interested in Southeast Asian history in recent times, especially Indonesia’s, which has been inspired by attending the UWRF for the last three years and now after attending GTLF I want to learn more about Malaysia.
What I have learned about Penang is it is a Malaysian state divided into two parts by the Strait of Malacca; Penang Island to the west, where the capital city George Town is located, and Seberang Perai on the Malay Peninsula to the east. Evidence has been found of human remains in Seberang Perai dating back 5,000 to 6,000 years ago.
Penang’s modern history began in 1786 with the acquisition of Penang Island from the Sultanate of Kedah by the British East India Company. Developed into a free port, the city state was subsequently governed as part of the Straits Settlements[4]. By the end of the 19th century, George Town prospered and became one of the major entrepôts[5] in Southeast Asia.
Following the revocation of George Town’s free port status in the 1960s, the state suffered economic decline and massive unemployment. The state government at the time led a push to reorient the economy towards hi-tech manufacturing, successfully recovering Penang’s economy and lending the state its moniker as the Silicon Valley of the East.
Anyway, that’s a short snapshot of Penang’s history. Long story short, by the time I arrived at the venue the room was full, and I wasn’t able to enter. But not to worry, the beauty of festivals such as GTLF is there are multiple sessions on at any one time, so I decided to wander back to the UAB Salon to catch the announcement of the Penang Monthly Short Story Competition.
The inaugural Penang Monthly Short Story Competition celebrates the art of storytelling in all its sharpness, nuance, and wonder. The prize honours stories that are alive to place, yet unafraid to traverse wider worlds, and embody narratives that carry both craft and imagination, intimacy and vision. It also seeks to affirm the power of story to move, question, and endure.
Congratulations goes to Nur Syuhada binti Mohd Surahbil, the winner of this year’s Penang Monthly Short Story Competition, as well as to the finalists Joshua Lim Jia Sheng and Tan Shu Min.
Her story, ‘The Echo That Splits Two Worlds‘ blends Penang folklore, loss and the supernatural into a story about the echoes we follow, the gates we shouldn’t cross, and the memories that refuse to fade. It’s a great read.
This was a fun session to attend, and it was great to see the excitement and pride of the finalists and their families who were in attendance.
The next session on my schedule was a panel discussion titled ‘Living Memories, Silenced Histories’ with Reggie Bray, Ratih Kumala and Ramayda Akmal, moderated by Bernice Chauly. This panel explored the ways memory, inherited identity, and silenced histories, including those passed down through family, are represented in writing, especially in postcolonial and transnational contexts. Together, these writers reflected on how storytelling can both reclaim the past and reshape the imagination of nationhood.
I was particularly moved by Reggie Bray when he talked about being an ‘indo’. Indo refers to people in the former Dutch East Indies who were of mixed Dutch and indigenous Indonesian descent including their descendants today. I have just finished reading Revolusi by David Van Reybrouck, this is an awesome book that identifies Indonesia’s struggle for independence as one of the defining events of the twentieth century. But the book also identifies the discrimination directed towards indo’s (as well as anyone else that wasn’t European/Dutch) and the challenges they faced. Listening to Reggie’s experience put a human face to the discrimination that I had learned about.
This session reinforced my believe that the legacy of colonialism across the world is the need to heal. Healing is required so we can start the work to strive for balance in the relationships between people as well as our relationship with the land/environment/planet.
Anyway, it was now time for my first conundrum of the festival as I wanted to attend both the panel ‘The Literature of Fact – The Art and Power of Creative Non-Fiction’ with Eugene Quah, Wan Phing Lim and Joe Freeman and the book launch, ‘Rehumanising Rabindranath Tagore: A Malaysian Kaleidoscopic View’.
The panel was going to discuss how creative non-fiction blends factual integrity with the craft of literature, turning truth into compelling narrative as well as how writers balance fact and imagination, the ethical dilemmas they face, and why creative non-fiction matters for readers and society today. However I have used a Rabindranath Tagore quote to start my book so I decided I wanted to learn more about him so attended the book launch.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter. In 1913, Tagore became the second non-European to win a Nobel Prize in any category, and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore’s poetic songs are viewed as spiritual and mercurial. As a humanist, universalist, internationalist, and ardent critic of nationalism, he denounced the British Raj and advocated independence from Britain. As an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that comprised paintings, sketches and doodles, hundreds of texts, and some two thousand songs; his legacy also endures in his founding of Visva-Bharati University.
Marking the centenary of Rabindranath Tagore’s 1927 visit to Malaya, this event introduced Rehumanising Rabindranath Tagore, a multidisciplinary Malaysian anthology exploring Tagore’s legacy through contemporary local lenses. Contributors reflect on poetry, music, translation, and memory inviting us to see not just Tagore in Malaysia, but Malaysia in Tagore.
This was an interesting session hosted by Lalita Sinha. I didn’t get the names of the panelists, but they represented several aspects of the project from research to cover design providing a great insight into their creative processes. I wish them all the best with the anthology and the celebrations marking Tagore’s visit next year.
My last event of the day was, ‘Ghost Bird’ by Omar Musa and Mariel Roberts. This was the performance I was most looking forward to prior to coming to GTLF. I saw Omar and Mariel perform their show, The Offering (A Plastic Ocean Oratorio) at UWRF last year, it was awesome, and now I can say Ghost Bird was just as good. I have been a huge fan of Omar’s for many years and his latest album, The Fullness, has been on high rotation throughout 2025.
Ghost Bird included spoken word, rap, and experimental music, creating an extraordinary soundscape that was lyrical, fierce, and fragile.
This was a brilliant performance and a great way to end Day 1 at the GTLF.
However it has been remiss of me to not mention food thus far in this blog, especially as we are in George Town, Penang, a renowned culinary destination. Tonight I dined at the local hawker centre and ate some of the best fried rice I’ve ever enjoyed. As I finished my meal, taking in the sights, sounds and people around me, while reflecting on the first day of GTLF, I couldn’t help but smile with the feeling of gratefulness for the opportunity to be here (thanks again Writers SA), to learn from such a diverse array of authors, enjoy a performance from one of my favourite artists, and eat such awesome food!
I had many blessings to count.
Day 2 – Saturday 29th November
My aim for my morning walk was to see as much of the famous street art as I could. I love getting out and about early, especially when in new places, it’s less busy making it easier to appreciate the place, and it’s the best time of the day, I love that early morning vibe. Besides, the weather was awesome, it was drizzling yesterday morning, so I took the opportunity to get out and about before the heat set in for the day.
Here is a small selection of the pictures I took during the walk.
I arrived early excited to see what the day would bring. However, today started with another conundrum, should I attend the panel session, ‘She Who Remembers, She Who Rewrites’ at UAB Hall with Ramaya Akmal and Lize Spit, moderated by Bernice Chauly, or the panel session at WOU Hall titled ‘Verses of Our Time: Poetry and Its Crossings’. This featured poets Anthony Tao, Helen Mort and Kiriti Sengupta and was moderated by Malechi Edwin Vethamani. In this session, the poets reflected on how their work confronts love and loss, politics and memory, the intimate and the universal. Together, they ask what poetry can do now—and why its voice remains essential.
I usually gravitate to the sessions featuring poets, there can never be too many poets in the world. But whilst I love listening to poets read and reflect on their poems, I also love listening to novelists talking about their writing. So today I decided to attend the ‘She Who Remembers, She Who Rewrites’ session. This panel explored how stories handed down through culture can be unsettled, reimagined, and rewritten, challenging patriarchal traditions while illuminating the intimate bonds of memory and belonging.
This was a fascinating discussion and included the panel members reading excerpts from their novels. At one stage they talked about the question, ‘What if we don’t have a village/home to return to?’ which led to the idea that home can be people, not a place, best explained by the thought that if you love someone, you have a home.
The panel also discussed the importance of fiction within authoritarian regimes, especially in light of what is happening in many countries across the world.
Lize Spit talked about how she is struggling to write as it is hard to say her stories matter when so many people are suffering and she just wants to give voice to those who don’t have one. I have felt similarly in recent times, especially when I reflect on my privilege.
The importance of fiction was best summed up by Ramaya Akmal when she said, “Fiction has the power to refract and expand reality – it plays an important role to reveal the unspoken things that are too difficult for people to speak.”
I can’t recall which panelist said this, but I loved the sentiment, they said ‘I read not to escape the world but to be in the mind of another human’. This is why reading is important, it helps build empathy for others.
I was meditating on this thought as I made my way over to Bangunan Wawasan for the next session. On the way I got to chat with Eva Fernandes. She had recognised me from UWRF and said hello. It was great to chat to her, albeit for only a few minutes, as I am a bit of a fan. She is an interdisciplinary artist and one of my favourite performers/artists/presenters/moderators from Ubud, if she is involved in one of the sessions or events, you know it will be a good one. Anyway, thanks for the chat Eva and for the recommendation to attend the Ubud Food Festival. It’s now on the bucket list! 😊
Speaking about recommendations. I got one from Casey, another fellow attendee at GTLF whom I met yesterday at the opening ceremony. He is from Penang but lived in Taiwan for several years and has a great affinity with its culture, he even introduced me to Yu-Ting Kuo from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Malaysia. Based on Casey’s recommendation, I decided to attend, ‘How Does Food Shape National Identity? A Look at the Taiwan Railway Gourmet Tour in Taiwan Travelogue’ featuring Yang Shang-zi.
Yang Shang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue is presented as a memoir of the fictional Japanese writer Aoyama Chizuko, the novel tells the story of Chizuko’s year in Taiwan, then a Japanese colonial island in 1938. In Taiwan, Chizuko develops a complex relationship with her interpreter Ō Chizuru, who introduces her to local Taiwanese cuisine through their travels around the island.
This session comprised a prepared presentation from Yang and she sought to answer the question posed in the title of the session. I am fascinated by the history of food and its link to our identity and culture, I write about it in my book so this presentation was an absolute treat.
Yang used the example of Borsch, a beetroot soup, UNESCO officially inscribed the ‘Culture of Ukrainian borsch cooking’ on its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in 2022. The ruling wasn’t about claiming exclusive ownership but recognising that the culture of cooking and consuming borsch in Ukraine is an essential part of their heritage that the world has a duty to protect and celebrate. It was a clear statement: borsch is an integral part of Ukraine’s identity and this decision was a profound moment for Ukrainians.
Of course for Russians and other eastern European nations borsch is part of their heritage as well. To me it’s a bit like the debate between Australians and New Zealanders as to the origin of the pavlova. I dream that one day the only thing that was contested in Palestine was who made the best hummus.
From a Taiwanese perspective, Yang asked, who owns Braised Pork with Rice? A dish deemed by many to be the national dish of Taiwan. Some argue it’s a Taiwanese dish, others argue it originated in Shandong, China. And I have since learned that some believe Beef Noodle Soup is the national dish of Taiwan.
Food and recipes can go back generations and form the basis of our identity. But as Yang identified, food is always evolving. Using the example of Taiwan where for 4000 years the indigenous Taiwanese were doing their thing until the 17th century when the Chinese came along, followed by the Japanese and then the Americans after World War Two. All these cultures influencing Taiwanese cuisine.
Anyway, this was a fun session that left me wanting to sample some Taiwanese food. Thank you Casey for the recommendation, I would not have attended this session without it and I’m glad I did.
Following on from the previous session about Taiwanese food, I learned that Chinese people didn’t settle in Taiwan until the 17th century due to the encouragement and protection of the Dutch. Before then the Chinese were afraid of indigenous Taiwanese as they were head hunters. Hence, the current dispute between China and Taiwan’s ‘Chineseness’ is not timeless. Taiwan has not formally ‘declared independence’ from China, instead the Chinese Civil War created two rival governments (the PRC and the ROC), with the ROC retreating to Taiwan in 1949. Since then, the island has developed its own political system and identity, while its legal status and relationship to China remains contested.
After lunch it was time for another panel session with Kam Raslan, Wan Phing Lim and Wilfried N’Sonde talking with Sharaad Kutan about ‘Wit, Satire, and the Playful Imagination’. This was a panel of writers who wield wit, satire, and irony to unsettle power, question traditions, and expose taboos.
As you could imagine, with a title such as this, this was a fun session with lots of laughter. I particularly enjoyed listening to Wilfried N’Sonde, he has a great energy about him.
This session reminded me that laughter is good for the body and the soul and I agree with the suggestion that was made that there should be a Nobel Prize for Humour so we can celebrate wit, satire and playfulness.
I left this session early as I wanted to head over to the UAB Hall to listen to Madelaine Thien speak with Karina Robles Bahrin. I didn’t want to be late as I thought this would be a popular session, and I was correct, the room was packed by the time it started.
The premise of this session, ‘Stories we Inherit – Belonging Through Time’, is stories are not only passed down; they linger, transform, and return in unexpected ways. Madelaine Thien’s work grapples with history, migration, and the search for belonging. Her latest novel, The Book of Records explores the role of fate in history, the migratory nature of humanity and the place of faith in our world, addressing fundamental questions about creativity, good and evil.
I loved listening to Madelaine speak, there is something so quietly powerful about her presence.
This discussion sought to define belonging and asked the question, do we find it or create it? Belonging can relate to the times, eras, political and economic conditions but relies on comfort, place and people. The flip side of belonging is it requires sacrifice and compromise.
“I like to think of home as a verb, something we keep re-creating”
This is a quote from Madelaine Thien, I saw it on a book mark the lady sitting next to me had. To me belonging is where you feel at home and as discussed yesterday, home is where there is love.
I was encouraged when Madelaine said she listened to music when she wrote. This is something we have in common, hopefully by the end of 2026 we will also both be published authors. 😊
I got so much from this session and was moved by many things Madelaine said, such as we are constantly scratching a wound that will not heal, and we all have it. We need to celebrate the beauty of human life, seek belonging and love, and remember we are standing on the shoulders of those who came before us.
Madelaine also talked about the joy of writing a story and how the story can become something different to the story you start and that you should allow the change and let it become something else. When writing your mind is never at rest and the process changes you. Writing is a vocation and can also be experienced as an exorcism!
Reflecting on my own writing journey I am not the same person I was when I started 5-6 years ago. I haven’t worked out the reason why I write and have taken the path I have but the question of why keep writing is getting bigger. I feel scared for our world and question if writing a book will make not a jot of difference.
Madelaines talk gave me a lot to ponder as I headed to my next session, the book launch of Omar Musa’s Fierceland. His book is a haunting saga of family, corruption, and redemption, alive with ghosts of history, language, and the forest itself. This is the second book launch for Fierceland that I have attended as I got to attend the one at Ubud too. Actually, thinking about it, I’ve seen Omar perform and talk several times over the last month between Ubud and here, I hope he doesn’t think I’m a stalker! Ha!
This launch was moderated by Gareth Richards and it was a great conversation.
I purchased Fierceland back in September but have yet to read it. I loved Omar’s previous novel Here Come The Dogs and having seen Omar talk about this book twice now, I am excited to get my head into it.
Omar talked about the challenges of writing this book, in particular the time it took and going through the process of coming to hate what you want to love. I am frustrated with myself that it is taking so long to get my own book finished and experiencing something similar with my relationship with my book.
Gareth and Omar also talked about serendipity which was similar to the universal consciousness idea talked about at UWRF[6], whereby, things happen for a reason and we met people, or come across a piece of information, or a book, or a song, or something happens and things seem to align and come together. I believe the opportunity of attend GTLF was one of them for me, as it has opened my mind to new ideas, people and perspectives that will be important for completing my own book. Whatever you call it … synchronicities, coincidences, serendipity, fate, karma, universal consciousness, the alignment of the stars … it’s a fascinating thing to ponder.
Omar also talked about the shame of corruption and the way it is inevitably hugely extractive and exploitative, normalised through colonisation and maintained by current governments and capitalists. Asking the question, why do we hold people up just because they are wealthy, there is rarely a rags to riches story without it spilling blood, involving exploitation or completely fucking someone over along the way.
One of the challenges Omar faced writing this novel was trying to get a small poem translated into 50 indigenous languages (I can’t recall how many he actually achieved in the end). The process of obtaining those translations led to the serendipity, experiences, people and inspirations highlighted above. But it also identified the shortcomings of AI translations and reinforced the notion that language is always evolving.
Omar was brilliant once again and I really enjoyed Gareth Richards, he was a great moderator for this session, I could have listened to these two talk for hours.
Omar’s session finished at 5.30pm, so there was still half an hour to go at the ‘Poetry, Performance, Resistance’ session up at the UAB Hall. I ducked up to check it out. This session brought together performance poets; Bernice Chauly, Shivram Gopinath and paul catafago who use their craft as both art and activism, embodying stories of struggle, defiance and survival.
I arrived just in time to hear paul catafago recite his poem, ‘Get the Fuck out of Gaza’. This was such a powerful moment and I was awestruck at both the poem and paul’s performance of it. I was hoping to find a link to share of paul performing this poem but alas, I couldn’t find one on the interwebs.
His profanity ruffles a few feathers, as paul said, ‘They asked why my poems carry profanity. But tell me, what curse in my mouth could ever rival the obscenity of a people bombed, starved and exiled? My language is not the profanity. The profanity is a world that watches suffering and calls it politics.’
That was the end of the formal sessions for Day 2. I had a bit of time before tonight’s special event, ‘Mic Mythos’ so I wandered to the local hawker centre to find some Taiwanese Braised Pork and Rice. I had noticed a Taiwanese stall yesterday and as luck would have it, they had the dish on the menu … and it was delicious!
Mic Mythos was held at TheCanteen@ChinaHouse, and was a celebration of rhythm, story, and the power of language to move and transform. We were treated to some live music from DramBand, Penang’s first and only Irish band, and some sensational performances from Ng Yi-Sheng, Shivram Gopinath, Anthony Tao and Omar Musa.
This was a fun night held in a great little venue.
Day 3 – Sunday 30th November 2025
It was another perfect morning for a walk and I found myself down by the waterfront, I also happened across a game of cricket! Here are some pics.
Today is the last day of GTLF and it started at the UAB Hall for the panel session ‘Frontlines of Truth’. In this session, Joe Freeman and Anthony Tao, whose work moves between literature, commentary and reporting, reflected on the practice of writing in turbulent times. They explored how narrative journalism and cultural criticism can capture nuance, confront power, and preserve memory.
This was an interesting conversation which emphasised the importance of transparency and accountability to build trust and how litigation is used as a form of censorship. But the points that resonated with me the strongest was the importance to write about things that others don’t and that it should not be risky to tell the truth.
I stayed on at the UAB Hall for the next panel session, ‘Ideas, Power, and the Nation’. This panel brought together two of Malaysia’s foremost thinkers, Terence Gomez and Ooi Kee Beng, to discuss their philosophies on politics, governance, and civil society. In this conversation with Sharaad Kuttan, they reflected on the role of intellectuals in reframing national debates and reimagining the possibilities of democratic life.
This was an enlightening conversation and one I could have listened to for the rest of the day. Sharaad Kuttan was one of my favourite moderators at the festival, he was also great yesterday, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Terence Gomez and Ooi Kee Beng. Terence was particularly passionate about the role of the academic and our need to remember they have a role to help correct the serious problems in the world. He was also passionate about the imperative of inspiring students and had me reflecting on my own privilege of being taught by two great lecturers/academics in Donna Ferretti and Rick Atkinson, who were inspiring for me.
Terence also talked about corruption in Malaysia, drawing on his experience of writing Misgovernance. This book identifies that within Malaysia’s corporate sector, comprising a vast number of government-linked companies (GLCs), a political-business system has emerged contributing to grand corruption and offers evidence of a ‘Political-GLC complex’ featuring multi-faceted covert government-business relations. Power is overwhelmingly concentrated in the executive arm of government whose misgovernance of this complex has had major economic and political ramifications.
Furthermore, corruption is entwined with power and is especially evident in party politics leading to state capture through lobbying and political donations. The nature of power is to capture and control – be it for good or bad.
Terence Gomez had a book launch for Misgovernance yesterday, he talked about the feedback he received from people overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge posed by this corruption.
It is this feeling of being overwhelmed which many of us are struggling with at the moment. Issues just seem more and more complex. More chaotic. Its feeling overwhelmed by all the pain we see in the world and trying to make sense of the nonsense every day. It’s feeling as though we are in the permacrisis[7] and a poly crisis[8] all at once. I believe these are the symptoms caused by our disconnection with each other and nature which is also the root cause of the anxiety, depression and mental illness many of us are feeling.
The panel lamented the death of investigative journalism in Malaysia and the fact universities are in despair due to government and private sector pressure. A similar situation we seem to find ourselves in Australia as well.
I was inspired by Ooi Kee Beng who stated he didn’t start writing properly until he was 50. Gives me hope as that is around the same time I have started writing.
The panel also talked about writing as an act. It is a brave action when speaking truth to people who don’t want to hear what you have to say. It is imperative that we hold power to account. We also have moral obligation to take risks and have robust debates and difficult conversations. This requires trust and respect, not polarisation. To assist with this we need education to teach how to think independently, and not what to think.
It was now time for lunch but the first thing I did was purchase Ooi Kee Beng’s Passing Glimpses of the Present and Terence Gomez’s Misgovernance from the Gerakbudaya Bookshop located in the marketplace. I think I did well to resist the urge to buy books until day 3, but I really don’t need any new books, I already have a heap that are unread waiting to be enjoyed. Buy hey, I am at a literary festival, what else am I to do? 😊
Given that purchase, I decided to attend the book launch of Ooi Kee Beng’s ‘Passing Glimpses of the Present’. The book launch was moderated by Sharaad Kuttan which ensured it was a lively and interesting conversation which really did roll on from the previous session nicely.
‘Passing Glimpses of the Present’ is a collection of essays that captures Malaysia and the wider region in flux, offering incisive reflections on politics, society, and culture. I read this book during my travels home from Malaysia, so I thought I’d include a review of sorts …
Reading ‘Passing Glimpses of the Present’ by Ooi Kee Beng was the perfect tonic for my trip home from the GTLF. Not only did it elaborate further on some of the themes and ideas discussed at the festival but it has also provided me with a much greater understanding of the history, challenges and opportunities present in Malaysia and Penang as well as those we face globally.
I enjoyed the tempo of the essays in this collection. They tend to only be a few pages so don’t take long to read, this enables you to read an essay and then meditate on it, maybe going back and reading the bits underlined or circled (always in pencil, never with pen!), and reflect on Ooi’s words while taking in your surrounds. For me those surrounds included the Penang and Kuala Lumpur airports as well as for an hour or so on the flight home from KL to Adelaide. However, I must add I did finish the last of the essays at the Ashes Test match in Adelaide, which is quite fitting given that there are two essays in the book from Ooi’s visit to Adelaide in early 2025. This also enabled some excellent people watching, I love hanging out in airports, and Adelaide Oval is a spiritual place for me, so all in all a fitting way to complement my reading, reflections and observations.
In his introduction to the book Ooi Kee Beng says that freedom of speech is a responsibility which calls for diplomacy, for caution, and for wit. But before that it calls for accountable thinking. The first step to thinking freely is to understand how our thoughts are conditioned. I agree with Ooi when he observed that the generation of thought, which is an exciting process, is something worth thinking about more often.
Ooi talked about epiphanies as a part of his writing process. Epiphanies are moments of sudden insight leading to profound changes in understanding or perspective. Epiphanies are linked to innovation as they can spark new purpose, confidence and courage to walk a different road.
The epiphany that has impacted me the most was the one that told me to write a book.
The epiphany I just had is that epiphanies and serendipity are siblings and universal consciousness is their mother.
The first section of this book is titled ‘Global Inspirations’ and includes essays on subjects ranging from ASEAN, geopolitics, climate change and multipolarity. I have been struggling with nailing down my thoughts around geopolitics for my own book but Ooi has opened my mind to perspectives and insights that are helping frame my own ideas so I can write about them.
Ooi writes about the inevitability of a multipolar world as it has always been multipolar. The many wars in which the unipolar world has been involved since 1940’s all testify to the fact multipolarity is the essence of humanity. This multipolarity requires fair trade and mutual aid to offer the best chance for humanity’s many peoples to live in peace for any substantial period of time. Trade wars therefore are a travesty, an archaic condition, and should be avoided for it discards the lessons learned in the history of globalisation and ignores the diversity of humankind.
As Ooi Kee Beng wrote … So, enough talk of polarity and polarisation, discard use of unipolarity for the insidious aggression it injects into global discourses. Replace these with notions nurtured on acceptance of the diversity of human wishes, the multi-agency of societies and states and the multiple civilisational nature of human existence.[9]
A unipolar world can only be built through conquest and control. A multipolar world can only be built through inclusion. We can draw upon the Bandung[10] spirit to help envisage a multipolar world that is peaceful and enable the people of the Global South a rightful place at the table.
In the essay titled ‘A Multipolar World Is Now Highly Possible’ Ooi Kee Beng asks … In the longer historical perspective, did the USA get drawn into being Britannica 2.0 in the 1940’s, stalling the American nation-building, and the American Dream? Furthermore did fighting communism made it believe that any society building is socialism, and therefore taboo. Thus, its nation building was put into cold storage. It is apparent that the lure of world hegemony replaced the aim of becoming an enviable model of liberalism and democracy for the world.
With world hegemony came the military industrial complex that US President Dwight D Eisenhower warned us about. He said … we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industry complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. The weight of his words is all the more pertinent when you reflect on the current excesses and irrationalities of American imperialism.
Regarding climate change, Ooi writes that climate change is not about the loss of control but the limits of our understanding, the patterns we once relied on no longer apply and nature’s unpredictability is accelerating, posing the following questions, can global civilisation evolve to embrace a symbiotic relationship with our planet? And can we, standing on the edge of catastrophe, move beyond competition and embrace a future built on cooperation with each other and the Earth?
These are the types of questions I am grappling with in my own book.
I believe we are at a stage when it is time for us (humanity) to heal, heal our relationships with each other and with the Earth. To do this, Ooi Kee Beng suggests that we need to change our perspective of the last 200-300 years, “If we consider that period as a time when humanity was discovering itself, and a time when humanity realised the fullness of its diversity and, in the process, was badly traumatised, then we can consider the coming century as a time of remedial, curative and therapeutic development.” (page 24)
Another essay that I really enjoyed was titled ‘Simple Tools for Taming Your Prejudices’. In this essay Ooi writes of his conviction that attitudes of superiority inevitably cultivate fear. He offers three ways to prevent discrimination and bullying. Firstly, he encourages mutual aid which is reliant on an approach based on cooperation and collaboration and requires empathy to be successful. Secondly, apply the golden rule, treat other people the same way you wish to be treated. And thirdly, don’t conclude, hypothesize instead. A hypothesis promotes humility over arrogance. Promotes truth over prejudice. Prejudice breeds hate. Hate is lazy thinking.
The final essay I wish to comment on is titled ‘Be Humble, Be Honest, Be Honourable’, which is a great essay to end this review. To be humble nurtures the insight and truth that all knowledge is tentative, a humble person realises the importance of listening and contemplating. Our self-respect depends on showing the strength to be honest and being honourable is being consistent in your humility and honesty. Being humble, honest and honourable is all about respecting others and respecting yourself.
This collection of essays is more about the journey than the destination and as Zairil Khir Johari said they are … more a chase of the epiphanous than a lecture on the obvious. I recommend ‘Passing Glimpses of the Present’ by Ooi Kee Beng, I thoroughly enjoyed his reflections and writing and his essays have helped me formulate my own thoughts and writing regarding geopolitics and tackling the environmental, social and economic challenges that our world presents us with.
The other thing that this book has inspired within me is to write more essays myself. My writing style has evolved from writing essays and I did contemplate my book being a collection of essays. It is a natural way for me to write and after reading this book, I can say it’s also a form of writing I love to read.
The next session, ‘Echoes of a Homeland’ was back at the UAB Hall, where historian Nur Masalha, writer-director Ahmed Masoud, and poet paul catafago reflected on how literature, scholarship, and art bear witness to displacement and dispossession. Their words keep alive the memory of a homeland, resisting erasure while carrying forward the hope of belonging. To write of Palestine is to write of exile, resilience, and the longing for home. Having already heard paul catafago recite his poems ‘Remember Us’ and ‘Get the Fuck Out of Gaza’ I was looking forward to this session.
I listen to the ‘Empire: World History’ podcast with William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, this is a brilliant podcast that has covered many periods and aspects of world history. I commend their series on Gaza, it has certainly opened my mind to the fascinating history of the city, one of the oldest urban centres in the world.
Nur Masalha wrote Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History which traces Palestine’s rich heritage, uncovering cultures and societies of astounding depth and complexity that stretch back to the very beginnings of recorded history. The history of Palestine is a complex and multifaceted narrative, encompassing a rich cultural heritage and a resilient identity.
Ahmed Masoud grew up in Gaza and described the pain he feels as his entire neighbourhood had been destroyed, marking the second time that his family has lost everything. He can’t write fiction anymore and has turned to poetry, the first poem he wrote was for his brother who was shot by a drone for no other reason than he was fetching water for his family.
I avoided the session about Palestine at the UWRF, I avoided the feeling I have now, my heart is heavy, settler colonialism, and the resultant violence, apartheid and genocide, are some of the greatest evils we have imposed on the world. We are seeing the worst of it happening right now in Palestine, but it has impacted every continent on Earth. It is time we determine that settler colonialism is terrorism, no matter where it happens in the world. It must stop.
Perhaps we need to see ourselves as Palestinian. We may not be Palestinian by birth but we can be by will. Maybe the idea of identifying as Palestinian may be too much for some people. Perhaps let’s just think of ourselves as human beings first?
What makes us human is language.
Storytelling is a way to heal.
We need more poets.
My heart is broken.
…
The next session, ‘Writing as Philosophy’, was at the Wawasan Hall where Jin Young Lim reflected on Daoist ideas of flow and harmony in everyday life, while Wilfried N’Sondé drew on themes of migration, identity, and the search for belonging. Together, they discussed how writing becomes a practice of reflection, offering new ways to understand self and the world.
They talked about our common humanity and that we are all human beings first. Our similarities far outweigh our differences. This discussion also identified the universal wisdom and knowledge found across all cultures. For example, people in Korea thought Wilfried was Buddhist but he was just living his Congolese values.
I love the Daoist philosophy and its emphasis on flow. We can bring flow to life through contemplative practice and ceremony, to delve deeper in to consciousness, become one with nature and just slow down and reflect. I believe this is more important now more than ever in our fast turning world.
Bakar and Wilfried N’Sondé
The festival was coming to an end, and I didn’t want it to, so I headed back to the UAB Hall to catch the second half of the session ‘Borneo, Carried Across Oceans’ featuring some of my favourites from the festival, Madelaine Thien, Omar Musa and Gareth Richards.
The more I learn about Madeleine Thien’s latest book, The Book of Records the more it captures my imagination. Apparently the stories of the characters in the book fuse with those of philosophers from previous centuries including Baruch Spinoza, Hannah Arendt and the Chinese poet Du Fu. I am a big fan of Spinoza, he is my favourite philosopher, I’ve also read Hannah Arendt and learned a lot from her as well, so I am intrigued by this book, especially when I read a description that says the book is … “A deeply philosophical work of huge originality and heft, it shows a master storyteller writing at the height of her powers”. Madeleine Thien was my favourite speaker at GTLF and The Book of Records will soon find its way to my ‘to be read’ pile of books!
I also loved the thought that Madelaine shared when she talked about how stars are light coming from different times and things are side by side just as stars are.
Wrap Up
There was something that I think Ooi Kee Beng said at the end of the festival, and has gained greater poignancy for me since the debacle that ended the 2026 Adelaide Writers Week, it was along the lines of … the match of the present strikes against the past, the vocation of the writer is to keep it lit.
To keep it lit we need to name what is happening.
We are losing our humanity.
Our pursuit for control, power, infinite growth and money is destroying the fabric of what it means to be human. For me, the fabric of humanity is love, compassion, cooperation and community.
We are losing all sense of restraint or accountability. We are losing our moral compass.
We are also losing our connection to nature, placing ourselves separate or above nature, which is leading us to destroy our home, the Earth, through exploitation, leading to mass extinction and a climate emergency.
Democracy is broken. People are not their government. Surveys indicate that 90% of the people of the world want the genocide in Palestine to stop, but there appears no connection between our democratically elected governments and the will of the people. We need to reimagine democracy.
David Graeber in his book ‘Debt’ talks about communism being the foundation of all human societies and the basis of all human relationships. This is not communism as a structure or political ideology, but recognising our fundamental interdependence is the substance of social peace. Democracy is the thread to bring us together, it is how we interact with each other and the world.
If we think of democracy as practices and relationships it can encourage us to be open to listening. To be connected and to show up with curiosity. To be comfortable being uncomfortable. To me the essence of democracy is building trust. Trust can be built by bringing effort and sincerely to all things.
With trust comes love, compassion, cooperation and community.
I don’t care for zionism, fascism, nazism, authoritarianism, settler colonialism, imperialism … whatever, they are all ideologies used by people to impose their will over another which inevitably ends in someone being fucked over which is justified through confected violence, hatred, discrimination and dishonesty.
Fuck living in a world where we valorise these ideas.
Fuck anything that requires us to impose our will over others.
We need to restore the fabric of humanity.
We need balance and healing.
I return to the words of Ooi Kee Beng that I quoted at the start of this blog … GTLF celebrates the centrality of Literature in deepening human civilisation and human values, reminding us that knowledge is collectively generated, and that bold discussion, imagination and articulation are tools for liberation and growth. These are the true means of society building, of people building, and of world building.
This is the value of GTLF and all other writers’ festivals I have attended. Writers’ festivals expose us to ideas that challenge our minds and change the way we see the world. They encourage reflection and listening. They encourage connection.
What makes us human is language. Story telling is part of our DNA. Festivals such as George Town and Ubud (and I wish I could still say Adelaide), provide the space where we can fall in love with words, writing, poetry and our incredible ability to create language.
Reflecting on my experience of attending GTLF and the challenges currently facing the world has me thinking about some wisdom from the Warlpiri people that I refer to in my book. The Warlpiri people are from the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory. For the Warlpiri, the Southern Cross is a paradigm found in nature upon which all Warlpiri law is based, which promotes understanding of how everything in reality is related to everything else.[11] In Warlpiri designs based on the Southern Cross the faint inner star is always positioned perfectly in the centre, representing a perfect balance when all things are moving and working in harmony. However, this utopian state is unattainable, accordingly this star is not positioned in the centre of the constellation and is skewed off centre. For the Warlpiri, this serves as a reminder that nothing in life can be taken for granted and that everything requires constant effort and work and that we must always strive for this balance.[12]
Festivals such as the George Town Literary Festival provide a forum to share the work that helps us all strive for that balance.
May it continue long into the future to help us keep that match lit.
…
Thank you to everyone associated with the George Town Literary Festival, it was a fantastic experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I also loved my time in George Town, and I look forward to returning one day.
Thank you to Claire, Katherine and everyone else at Writers SA who made this opportunity possible, I am so grateful, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Shout out to Deb and Scott who sponsored me with their leftover ringgits from a previous trip to Malaysia … you guys would have loved GTLF … and the food. 😊
Thank you for reading this blog.
All the best.
If you enjoyed this blog, you may enjoy some of my others …
UBUD WRITERS AND READERS FESTIVAL
2025 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival
2024 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival
2023 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival
CHANGEFEST
Reflections from ChangeFest 2025
Reflections from ChangeFest 2024
BOOK REVIEWS
‘A Different Kind of Power’ by Jacinda Ardern
Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman
OTHER THOUGHTS, MUSINGS & INSIGHTS
LOXTON … Why I Love Where I Live
Some reflections on Afghanistan
My Plotted History of Humanity – Part 1 – The Pleistocene
Reflections of 20 odd years in Local Government
#BlackLivesMatter … do they really?
What’s So Magic About Mushrooms?
Consciousness – the path to our new ‘ism’?
COVID-19 … The crisis we had to have?
[1] George Town Literary Festival, 2025 Festival Guide, page 3.
[2] To explore more about place based community development I encourage you to check out by blog from Changefest – Reflections from Changefest25.
[3] Eksentrika, 2025, ‘GTLF 2025: Palestinian Poetry, Indie Bookshops And The Truth’, article found at GTLF 2025: Palestinian Poetry, Bookshops And The Truth
[4] The Straits Settlements were a group of British territories located in Southeast Asia. Originally established in 1826 as part of the territories controlled by the British East India Company, the Straits Settlements came under control of the British Raj in 1858 and then under direct British control as a Crown colony in 1867. In 1946, following the end of World War II and the Japanese occupation, the colony was dissolved as part of Britain’s reorganisation of its Southeast Asian dependencies in the area. The Straits Settlements originally consisted of the four individual settlements of Penang, Singapore, Malacca and Dinding. Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands were added in 1886. The island of Labuan, off the coast of Borneo, was also incorporated into the colony with effect from 1 January 1907, becoming a separate settlement within it in 1912. Most of the territories now form part of Malaysia, from which Singapore separated in 1965. The Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island were transferred from Singapore to Australian control in 1955 and 1958, respectively. Their administrations were combined in 1996 to form the Australian Indian Ocean Territories.
[5] An entrepôt is a transshipment port, city, or trading post where merchandise may be imported, stored, or traded, usually to be exported again. Entrepôt also means ‘warehouse’ in modern French. Entrepôts had an important role in the early modern period, when mercantile shipping flourished between Europe and its colonial empires in the Americas and Asia. Traders often did not want to travel the whole route and thus used the entrepôts on the way to sell their goods. Modern logistics, supply chain networks, and border controls have largely made entrepôts obsolete, or reduced them in number, but the term is still used to refer to duty-free ports or those with a high volume of re-export trade.
[6] This idea is explored in this blog – 2025 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.
[7] Permacrisis is a situation characterised by constant or significant turmoil and instability. It was Collins Dictionary word of the year in 2022!
[8] A polycrisis is a situation in which multiple, distinct crises (economic, environmental, geopolitical, social, or technological) occur simultaneously and interact in ways that amplify each other, producing outcomes more severe than the sum of the individual crises
[9] Ooi Kee Beng, 2026, Passing Glimpses of the Present, page 15.
[10] The Bandung Conference, attended by 29 Asian and African countries, was held in April 1955 in the Indonesian city of Bandung. The participants of the conference condemned colonialism, racial discrimination, and segregation, expressed support for people fighting for independence, and advocated for economic and cultural cooperation among states and peaceful resolution of conflicts.
[11] Langton, M. & Corn, A., 2023, ‘Law’, Thames and Hudson Australia, page 81.
[12] Langton, M. & Corn, A., 2023, ‘Law’, Thames and Hudson Australia, pages 81-83.