“Excess Baggage”: Karen Ma on Writing Transnational Fiction

 

Potluck dinner

Date: July 17, 2015 (Friday)

Time: 6:00–9:00 p.m. (Talk with Karen Ma 7:30–8:15, followed by a Q&A)

Place: Wesley Center, Room 205

Fee: Free of charge, open to SWET members and their guests
RSVP: Please let us know if you are planning to come so we can gauge numbers; contact SWET Events.

Summer is coming and it is time once again for the annual SWET Tokyo Summer Party! We invite fellow wordsmiths from near and far to gather and enjoy the “luck of the pot” at the Wesley Center, Omotesando, on the evening of July 17. As a highlight to the party, we will have a special guest, transnational writer and journalist Karen Ma. 

      

About Karen Ma

A self-professed global nomad, multilingual, and currently based in Beijing, Karen Ma is the author of the semi-autobiographical novel Excess Baggage (China Books, 2013) and the non-fiction book Modern Madam Butterfly: Fantasy and Reality in Japanese Cross-cultural Relationships (Charles E. Tuttle, 1996). She will give a talk on writerly matters, including how to transfer cultural issues from one language to another, how she has managed her writing career while moving between cities and countries, and the differences in writing non-fiction and fiction. (Order your copy of Excess Baggage via the SWET website Amazon link.)

  

Please note that Karen Ma will be appearing at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan for a dinner/lecture on July 2 (Thursday) to talk about “the ups and downs of Tokyo life for Chinese immigrants.” Non-FCCJ members interested may reserve a seat via SWET by writing to SWET Events (sign up here to attend at the "guest of the author" fee—¥2,100—for dinner and lecture.).

 

About the potluck dinner

The party will be “potluck” and BYOB. “Potluck” can mean whatever portable snack or dish you like and would care to share—not just home-prepared dishes, but a block of cheese, a bunch of grapes, a bag of potato chips, a loaf of bread, a bottle of pickles, a package of luncheon meat, something from the o-sozai section of the supermarket, etc. The pleasure of potluck is seeing what comes together.

The BYOB can be anything. SWET will provide paper cups, chopsticks, plates, napkins, and a corkscrew for bottles of wine.