On Saturday I attended a very enjoyable event at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival: a panel of three authors, Rana Dasgupta, Xujun Eberlein and Nam Le discussing the art of the short story. Moderator was Chris Wood of the Asia Literary Review. Thankfully not all the panellists agreed with one another, so there was an element of back-and-forth which sped the session along — the hour was up far too soon, leaving little time for questions from the audience.

This was the final weekend of this year’s litfest. Hong Kong’s Fringe Club is a great venue for this kind of festival, with bars, theatres, galleries and workshop spaces all crammed into the same tiny building in Central. Local book chain Dymocks had a makeshift bookshop set up in the main bar, and it was easy to mix with authors, journalists and publishing people.

Xujun has blogged about the event herself, and she tells a (short) story far better than I can.