Raffles Institution
2023 Creative Writing Festival
"The Past is Now"
Day 1
Students report at 0950
1000-1100 Welcome & Ice-Breakers
1100-1130 Writing Session
1130-1230 Lunch
1230-1330 Keynote Address by Ms Amanda Chong
1330-1345 Break
1345-1615 Workshops
(Click on 'Workshop Registration' tab in the menu to sign up)
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Keynote Address
When We Dead Awaken:
Writing as a way of
Re-visioning the Past
By Amanda Chong
In her essay "When We Dead Awaken", the Poet Adrienne Rich argued that in order to find their own voice, women writers need to return to the myth of the woman as represented in literature of the past and subvert these representations. Amanda Chong will share how her own poetry dissects gender stereotypes and gives voice to silenced women from history, powered by the twin engines of memory and imagination.
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Speaker Bio
Amanda Chong is a lawyer trained in Cambridge and Harvard, who writes when she should be sleeping. Her first collection of poetry, Professions (2016), was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018. Her poetry has been engraved on the Marina Bay Helix Bridge and included in the Cambridge International GCSE syllabus. She is interested in exploring themes of gender and power in both her creative and academic writing, which has been published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender. She was playwright for the musical The Feelings Farm produced by the Esplanade in 2021. Her play #WomenSupportingWomen won first prize at the T:>Works 24-Hour Playwriting Competition 2021. She is passionate about social justice and has co-founded a literacy charity and served on the Panel of Advisers for the Youth Court. (www.amandachong.com)
Workshop A:
Poems As Personal Histories and Myth-Making
By Jennifer Anne Champion
The writer George Orwell once allegedly penned the following: “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do the thinking for them.” Social expectations of who we should be often take precedence over the exploration of who we really are as people. But writing, and poetry in particular, is an opportunity to construct our personal identities in resistance to these expectations.
In this workshop, participants will take control of their own personal narratives by writing autobiographical poetry. You will be taught strategies and approaches to writing about personal identity – real, speculative or imagined – and by the end of the workshop, produce a poem that is indelibly and unmistakably yours.​
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Speaker Bio
Jennifer Anne Champion is a writer, educator, archivist and textile artist. She has authored two collections of poetry, is co-founder and Multimedia Editor of poetry.sg, and was Singapore’s digital poet-in-residence for the National Centre for Writing (UK) in 2021.
She has been described by Juice Magazine as “gifted with swift, animated style” and by Tatler Asia as “a household name in the local spoken word scene… with her sardonic humour.”
Her poem “Sentinel” was also featured in the Singapore ‘A’ Level Literature examination in 2021.
Workshop B:
The Hero's Journey
By Suffian Hakim
"The Hero's Journey" has informed the greatest stories that humanity has every conjured - from Homer's Odyssey to The Epic of Gilgamesh to Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter. Introduced to us by literary scholar Joseph Campbell, it is both a precursor to the three-act structure we use in school essays, as well as a reflection of human psychology, and the trials we need to go through to become better in the things we do. In this workshop, we look at "The Hero's Journey", and how we can apply it in our writing - as well as our personal lives.
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Speaker Bio
Described by the Straits Times as "one of the most whimsical, creative and unpretentious young voices in Singapore literature", Suffian Hakim is the author of "The Minorities" and "Harris bin Potter and The Stoned Philosopher", both published by Singapore-London publishers Epigram Books. His third novel, The Keepers of Stories, was longlisted for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize in 2019. Suffian was also the 2nd runner-up of the 2017 Esquire-Montblanc Fiction Writers Prize, and one of Apple's Red Dot Heroes for 2018. He also holds the honour of being the first Singaporean to speak at the Cairo Literature Festival in Egypt.
Workshop C:
“Telling It Like It Could Have Been” – Historical Fiction & Dramatic Theory
By Roshan Singh Sambhi, Andas Productions
In this workshop, we examine dramatization as a frame and process by which we capture the human essence of existing stories, and structure them in such a way as to preserve and amplify their universal qualities. In examining common conceptions of dramatic structure, students will be given both problem-solving tools for their own work and an understanding of the fundamental craft used in storytelling industries around the world. This session will use the historical epic Temujin (Andas Productions, 2020) as a case study for independently-produced work by Singaporean artists that garnered international acclaim.
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Speaker Bio
Roshan Singh Sambhi is a New York City-based writer and multimedia producer, and the founder of Andas Productions. His debut work, the historical epic Temujin (2020), was recognized at the Webby Awards (2021), Audio Production Awards (2021), and Asian Podcast Awards (2021). In 2022, Roshan worked as a screenwriting assistant to Philip LaZebnik, writer of Prince of Egypt and Disney’s original Mulan, on a slate of upcoming major animated films. Additionally, as a game developer, Roshan’s work has premiered at the Manhattan SPRING/BREAK Art Show (2021), Sing Lit Station’s Blk Party (2022), and the National Gallery Singapore's Gallery Children’s Biennale (2023).
