Independent Learning Centre

The Creative Writing Panel and Discussion is an informal and intimate event which has been designed so that interested students and staff will have the opportunity to listen to short readings of selected published works, learn more about the creative writing process as well as ask questions directly of our expert panel of acclaimed local Creative Writers in English.
In general, we hope to "spark the interest" of students to further expand their independent learning and creative expression through the medium of English. We are also hoping to encourage students to consider local writing in English, and perhaps even stimulate their own interest in Creative Writing in English - either as writers or as readers.
The Creative Writing Panel and Discussion is meant to be relaxed, informal and "organic", so we hope that all of our participants will enjoy the opportunity to get together and share their common interests in English Writing/Reading, and Creative Expression.

Prof. Agnes S. L. LAM

Agnes S. L. LAM recently retired as Professor at the University of Hong Kong and is also a poet.

Representative works include: Woman to Woman and Other Poems (1997), Water Wood Pure Splendour (2001) and A Pond in the Sky (2013).

In 2008, she was made Honorary Fellow in Writing by the University of Iowa and received the Nosside International Poetry Prize (Special Mention).

In 2009, she was commended by the Home Affairs Bureau, Hong Kong SAR Government, for her outstanding achievements in international arts and cultural activities. Her research on Asian poetry in English took her to several Asian cities from Macao to Delhi.

Book Display - LG1, Main Library, CUHK

Journal articles

Mr. Nury Vittachi

Nury Vittachi is one of Asia’s most widely published authors, and chairman of Asia-Pacific’s biggest association of writers. He is also a columnist, with a widely syndicated column and a website, www.mrjam.org. He teaches creativity and story structure at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Personal
Vittachi was born 54 years ago in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He is married to Englishwoman Mary Lacey, a teacher. They have three children, all Chinese, adopted He has lived in Hong Kong for 26 years.

Early career
Vittachi worked as a journalist with regular slots in many well-known media, including BBC, CNN and NBC. Most notably he was Assistant Editor of the South China Morning Post (1987 to 1993) and Assistant Editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review (1993 to 2004).

Recent career
Vittachi has written more than 40 books. He is best known for The Feng Shui Detective series among adults, and two series, Jeri Telstar and the Magic Mirror, among younger readers. He has been based at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University since 2004.

Website: www.mrjam.org Contact: Nury@vittachi.com Phone: (852) 6656 1460

Book Display - LG1, Main Library, CUHK

Non-fiction books

Fiction books

Books for young readers

(Photo by Paul Hilton)

Ms. XU XI (許素細)

XU XI 許素細 is the author of nine books of fiction and essays. The most recent titles are Access Thirteen Tales (2011), the novel Habit of a Foreign Sky (2010), a finalist for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize and an essay collection, Evanescent Isles (2008). A novel-in-manuscript That Man in Our Lives and an essay collection proposal Typhoon Mum, about her mother’s Alzheimer’s, are currently represented by the literary agency Harold Matson.

Work-in-progress includes a novella, The Milton Man, and a collaborative ekphrastic personal essay series responding to photography by David Clarke.

She is also editor or co-editor of three anthologies of Hong Kong writing in English; a fourth anthology of new Hong Kong short stories, The Queen of Statue Square & Other Stories, co-edited with Marshall Moore, is forthcoming from CCC Press, Nottingham, UK.

Recent & forthcoming fiction, essays & critical work appear or will appear in the journals Ploughshares, Four Quarters Magazine (India), The Letters Project (Univ. of Nottingham, UK), Silk Road, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, Fleur des Lettres (Chinese translation, Hong Kong), Toad Suck Review, Writing & Pedagogy (UK), as well as in several anthologies, including, All About Skin (Univ. of Wisconsin Press), APA Arts Anthology (AAWW, New York), The Bedford Introduction to Literature (St. Martin’s, New York), Still (Negative Press, UK), Understanding the Essay (Broadview Press, Canada).

Chinese Indonesian native of Hong Kong, she long inhabited the flight path connecting New York, Hong Kong and the South Island of New Zealand, until her mother’s Alzheimer’s ended those peregrinations; her mother is 93 in the moderate to severe stage.

From 2002-12 she was on the MFA in Writing faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she was elected and served as faculty chair from 2009-12.

She is currently Writer-in-Residence at City University of Hong Kong’s Department of English, where she established and directs Asia’s first, international, low-residency MFA in creative writing that also focuses on writing of, from and out of Asia. www.xuxiwriter.com

Book Display - LG1, Main Library, CUHK