Source: School of Foreign Languages
Written by: Jenny Lewis
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

The Sun Yat-sen University Center for English-language Creative Writing held the first event in its new Book Club series on Friday, June 13th. The evening featured a talk by an acclaimed Australian writer, an award presentation, the launch of an anthology, and a children’s performance, and was attended by students and faculty of SYSU and many members of the community at large. 

The Book Club series, part of the Center’s Reading and Writing Forum, invites writers to discuss the art, craft, and philosophy of their own work. In this spirit, Friday’s first guest was Francesca Rendle-Short, a novelist, essayist, and memoirist who is Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communications at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. Rendle-Short’s talk was called “JOY and the Practice of Creative Writing.” She discussed three ways of thinking about writing, the connection between visual art and her creative process, her latest book Bite Your Tongue, and then answered thoughtful questions from the audience.

Australian writer Francesca Rendle-Short giving a talk
 

Following the writer’s presentation, Director of the Center DAI Fan took the stage to announce the winners of the Center’s first annual National Creative Writing Competition. Two co-winners, TAN Wen from Renmin University of China and CHEN Hailun from Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU), and a runner-up, XU Ke at SYSU, were honored for their submissions. One co-winner present at the event, CHEN Hailun, spoke a few words of thanks. The contest entries covered a range of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and the winners were selected by three impartial judges from American MFA programs.

Next, Professor DAI Fan launched an anthology of creative writing produced by graduating SYSU students. The anthology, titled United, We Love, collects short stories, essays, and poems from the English major’s class of 2014. Dean of the School of Foreign Languages CHANG Chenguang participated in distribution of the new books to the students present.

The evening concluded with a performance by young children from the Shenzhen Lenture Education Technology initiative. The group, coordinated by former SYSU students, encourages creativity in children through English-language performance; at the event, the performers staged a short play called “The Old Woman and Her Three Cats” based on an Australian fairy tale by Jeri Kroll.

Group photo
 

This inaugural Book Club event was hosted by Center co-founder Jenny Lewis, and it represents a reorganization of the Center’s programs. In the future, the Reading and Writing Forum will invite writers to share their works-in-progress, as in the event on Friday, and will incorporate existing programs, such as student readings series Speakeasy, as well as expanding to allow students to study works of literature extracurricularly and gather together under the guidance of writers and teachers to discuss them. Future programs of the Sun Yat-sen University Center for English-language Creative Writing include international outreach in the form of a writers’ residency (beginning Fall 2014), a literary magazine to showcase student and non-student creative work in English, and more.