Singapore Writers Festival 2024: Insights into the comic industry, girl rage and gothic horror

SINGAPORE – Three panels prompted plenty of discussion around women in the literary scene and the stories they choose to tell.

On Nov 10, Yeo Hui Xuan, Erica Eng and Sarah Abdul Wahid shared their journeys as writers and artists in She Draws The Line: Women Revolutionising The Comic World. The session in the River Room at the Asian Civilisations Museum drew a sizable crowd, varying from polytechnic students to mid-career professionals.

While talking about struggles within the industry, Yeo cited instances of gender discrimination in which male authors told her that she would get married one day and have kids, leaving her no time to make more comics. She also spoke of being told to be quiet in Facebook group discussions because she is a woman.

Sarah offered a different perspective – that the independent scene has more women in it, adding that sometimes the struggle was more in staying motivated when seeing other artists produce highly admirable works. As a Malay comic writer, being a minority in the industry also led to feelings of alienation at times, Sarah said.

However, the writers also recounted positive experiences, from winning awards to meeting fans to finding communities that resonate with their stories. They also offered encouragement to audience members who aspire to be comic writers.

Held immediately afterwards, Careful, We Bite: Manifesting Girl Rage In A Supernatural World had a fully packed Blue Room in The Arts House, where hopeful SWF attendees milled outside the doors, hoping for a seat should someone leave.

Authors Felicia Low-Jimenez, Wen-yi Lee and Nuraliah Norasid discussed varying forms of girl rage in their works and personal lives.

Lee raised a point about girl rage being different across cultures. “A lot of these social media edits feature white women, but black women are often not allowed to express the same kind of rage. Neither are queer women nor anyone who isn’t part of the majority,” she said.

Referencing Korean author Han Kang’s recent win of the Nobel Prize for literature, she noted that girl rage is not always explosive either. At times, it is a frank depiction of the violence women experience.

Low-Jimenez and Nuraliah also highlighted that the manifestation of such anger may look different depending on one’s stage of life and that there is no right or wrong time to express or feel girl rage.

 A turnout of around fifty people for Meet The Author: Krystal Sutherland at Victoria Concert Hall allowed the Australian author to spend more time connecting with the audience. Nearly half of the 60-minute session was spent answering questions about writing craft, storytelling, shifts in the horror genre and character relationships.

One notable topic brought up by moderator Meihan Boey and revisited via questions from the audience was the way Sutherland infused rich descriptions of scent and colour into her novels.

For House Of Hollow (2021), it involved creating a “scent bible” that helped her write about rot and decay in an evocative and intriguing manner. Also important were word clouds related to green and images of forests and trees, which Sutherland imagined as the colour for the novel.

Junior college student Chng Yun Ning says: “I read House Of Hollow in 2022 and was excited when I realised after buying my youth pass that she would be coming. I think she’s on the same level as young-adult writers Chloe Gong and Dustin Thao, who came when I was last at the festival in 2022, but maybe more so internationally than with the Singaporean teens.”