Poet Pooja Nansi calls for empathy, not boycotts, for BooksActually and owner Kenny Leck

SINGAPORE - Poet and Singapore Writers Festival director Pooja Nansi has called for empathy, not boycotts, in response to the ongoing BooksActually saga and its disgraced owner, Mr Kenny Leck.

In a viral article by digital news site Rice Media published last Saturday (Sept 25), former employees of Mr Leck - including his ex-wife, Ms Renee Ting - alleged he had made romantic advances towards young female staff.

Mr Leck has denied the allegations and said he will transfer ownership of the store and its publishing arm, Math Paper Press, to his five employees.

In a Zoom press conference on Tuesday for the Singapore Writers Festival, the media was not allowed to ask questions directly and could only submit them privately to the organisers, who said any queries about BooksActually would not be addressed there.

BooksActually last served as the festival's official bookstore in 2018.

Ms Nansi, whose latest poetry collection, We Make Spaces Divine, was published by Math Paper Press earlier this year, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that she had not wished to let the issues surrounding the bookstore overshadow the work of the festival team.

She said Mr Leck has been her "friend and publisher" and feels she can both refuse to condone specific behaviour and show compassion at the same time. "I do not believe that anyone is transformed through being shunned or through shame. I believe people grow when provided resources and space for help and healing."

She added: "In our hurry to resolve our own discomfort as a community, however, I do not believe that we can afford to resort to boycotts and disavowals.

"We cannot penalise other writers or the current employees of BooksActually. It doesn't benefit anyone for us to approach the many systemic shortcomings that this has brought to light in a knee-jerk manner.

"For those of us who spent time at BooksActually and came to love it as a community space, it feels like our foundations have been shaken. But if the literary community cannot, above all, model empathy in our desire to dismantle and rebuild, then literature has failed us and we have certainly failed each other."

The Rice article interviewed several former BooksActually staff, most of them women who were in their 20s when they worked there. They described working long hours without designated breaks and being paid little and sometimes late.

Ms Ting, who was in a relationship with Mr Leck for six years, said she drew no salary while they were dating, lived in the store and had hardly any days off.

Artist Cheryl Charli Tan, 23, who worked in marketing at BooksActually from August 2017 to January 2019, told The Straits Times that payments were often delayed. At one point, she said, she was owed about $2,000 for six months.

In response to ST's queries, the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (Tafep) said it has not received any complaints against BooksActually, except for one instance of anonymous feedback on Sunday that highlighted the recent online articles with no further information provided.

A Tafep spokesman added it is currently in touch with the new management team at BooksActually to guide it on workplace fairness policies and practices.

The BooksActually team said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that it would be taking a break for the rest of the week for the sake of its members' mental well-being.

"We understand the community's need for answers, changes and clarification, but we seek your understanding in allowing our team space, time and privacy to allow this process to take place," it said.