Picture Story: O Thiam Chin at Kinokuniya Bookstore Singapore, June 2011
04 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in The Far East - Contemporary Stories & Writers
While based in Dublin, Ireland, I happened to be on Orchard Road in Singapore that rainy Saturday afternoon last June 11, when one of the nation’s more prominent and fashionable writers, O Thiam Chin read excerpts of his latest work of flash fiction from *Under the Sun, at Crossroads, Kinokuniya Bookstore, Singapore. It would be a few days yet before I left for East Africa.
I was so glad to have wandered into the scene purely by chance.
A congenial gathering and the usual crowd bustle among them patient parents keen to have a listen in and their gregarious children ready for athletic sprints into the store’s vibrant stationery department. O Thiam Chin was a joy to listen to and a natural inspiration for any aspiring author. He spoke with an utter seriousness and dedicated passion on the complexities that afforded for a kind writing life…one that he so thoroughly enjoyed, despite the odds.
With an easy, ready smile, he talked at some length of a natural everyday discipline that would see him produce 50 captivating flash fiction stories and also described the difficulties of having to subscribe to a detailed editing task. He is by far an elegant person to meet, a charismatic writer, charming and approachable at every turn. On reading aloud a few of his enigmatic pieces one of which proved slightly erotic, he held the crowd at a standstill. - susan abraham
Further Reading:
*Under the Sun is published by the MPH Group Publishing, Kuala Lumpur. You may read interviews with O Thiam Chin on the Good Books Guide blog & The Jakarta Post.
Photo Credit: The above photograph is © copyright of Susan Abraham.
