PANEL | Beyond the Headlines: Writing Southeast Asia

Beyond the Headlines: Writing Southeast Asia

Speakers: Tash Aw, Thammika Songkaeo, and Marga Ortigas

Moderator: Rina Hiranand

Date: March 1, Sun

Time: 1:00pm - 2:15pm

Venue: Fringe Club - Fringe Underground

Address: 2 Lower Albert Rd, Central

Price: HKD298

Language: English

Format: Panel

Description:

From bustling cities to quieter margins, Southeast Asia offers stories shaped by movement, memory, and uneven visibility. This moderated panel brings together Thai writer Thammika Songkaeo, whose fiction probes class, intimacy, and displacement; Filipino author Marga Ortigas, whose work examines diaspora, language, and cultural inheritance; and acclaimed novelist Tash Aw, longlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award, known for exploring migration, family, and the afterlives of empire. Together, the authors introduce their books and reflect on how place informs storytelling. They consider how geography and history shape voice and form, what it means to write from regions often overlooked, and how representation and readership are negotiated on global literary stages.

About the Speaker:

Tash Aw

Tash Aw is the author of five novels, including, most recently, The South, and a memoir of a Chinese-Malaysian family, Strangers on a Pier, finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize. His work has won the Whitbread and Commonwealth Prizes, an O. Henry Award and been longlisted three times for the MAN Booker Prize. His novels have been translated into 26 languages and been longlisted for the Prix Médicis Étranger, Prix Inrocks and Premio Gregor von Rezzori. As an essayist and critic, he has contributed to The Paris Review, New York Review of Books, New York Times, and the Guardian, among many other publications. He lives in Paris and Kuala Lumpur.

Thammika Songkaeo

Thammika Songkaeo is a transnational novelist, essayist, and filmmaker of Thai origin whose work probes the quiet tensions of identity, motherhood, and belonging. Described by Elle Singapore as “dissecting motherhood, marriage, and the cost of selfhood with razor-sharp precision,” her debut novel, Stamford Hospital, was named by Prestige as one of the 10 must-reads for International Women’s Day 2025, alongside works by Margaret Atwood and Simone de Beauvoir. A lifelong global nomad since 1992, Songkaeo brings a third-culture lens to her storytelling.

Marga Ortigas

Marga Ortigas travelled the world as a journalist for three decades, with a career spanning five continents and two of the largest global news networks. After getting her start in the Philippines, she joined CNN in London, working across Europe, Iraq, and Gaza. She then returned to Asia with Al Jazeera, setting up its bureau in Manila and covering the wider Pacific region. As senior correspondent, Marga reported from the frontlines of armed conflict, geopolitical challenges, and climate change, receiving an award for Humanitarian Reporting from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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ABOUT HKILF

The Hong Kong International Literary Festival (HKILF) inspires the joy of reading by bringing the world’s writers and stories to Hong Kong’s diverse communities. A dynamic year-round programme and an annual festival offer dialogue, entertainment and perspective, while the Young Readers Festival (YRF) motivates students to engage with all aspects of the written word, improving communication skills, while nurturing the art of writing and storytelling.

The annual festival features established and emerging writers from around the world, alongside local literary talents, in a programme that includes panel discussions, book talks, readings, workshops, walks, school programmes, performances, and more.

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