English Department Presentation by Dr. Beth Yahp

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Thursday, March 24th 3-4.30PM Zoom and in-person in KUY 410 Zoom: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/93959194850?pwd=SjF3MVduVVJQejd3VnEzZ1FobmN4Zz09 Meeting ID: 939 5919 4850 Passcode: 236190 Title: Ephemeral Life Writing As Resistance. In this talk/reading, Beth Yahp will discuss her practice of "ephemeral life writing" – a practice/methodology of writing the miniscule and unimportant rather than the sensational (based on Georges Perec’s notions of the infra-ordinary and the endotic) – as a form of lowkey resistance to structures of economic rationalism and weaponised discourses of health and well-being, especially in a time of pandemic. Beth will read new work from her Small Pleasures project, in which the use of critical autobiography, pathography and autoethnographic processes as a hybrid methodology may prove fruitful for interrogating contested relationships between a narrator, their cultural or familial landscapes and their own body’s history/memory. Bio: Beth Yahp’s fiction and creative non-fiction include: The Red Pearl and Other Stories (Vagabond Press, 2017); a memoir Eat First, Talk Later (Gerakbudaya, 2018; Penguin Random House, 2015), which was shortlisted for the 2018 Adelaide Festival Award for Literature (Non-Fiction); and a novel The Crocodile Fury (Vagabond Press, 2017; Angus & Robertson, 1992). Beth wrote the libretto for composer Liza Lim’s opera Moon Spirit Feasting, which won the APRA Award for Best Classical Composition in 2003. Her current projects include a collection of creative non-fiction articles on women, politics and the arts in Malaysia and a series of Small Pleasures set in Sydney and Kuala Lumpur. She currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Sydney.

Ticket Information
Free and open to the public

Event Sponsor
English, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Ruth Y. Hsu, 63049, rhsu@hawaii.edu

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