Jing-Jing Lee is the author of the poetry collection And Other Rivers, the novella If I Could Tell You, and the novel, How We Disappeared. Jing will give a master class for the International Writers’ Collective online on Sunday, 11 July 2021 from 15:00 – 16:30 Amsterdam time.

Note: If you are currently enrolled in one of our 6- or 8-week core courses, don’t forget to use your members’ discount code when you register to receive 25% off. You will have received it by email when you registered.

We’ll be discussing Jing’s historical novel, How We Disappeared. The novel is about comfort women in Singapore during World War II. We’ll talk about the craft choices Jing made in her novel, sources of inspiration, the delicate art of writing about trauma, the research needed for historical fiction, and how to get published. This master class will be moderated by teacher Karen Kao and consist of an interview followed by breakout sessions.

To get the most out of this class, we recommend that you read How We Disappeared in advance. You can purchase the novel at your local bookstore or online.

ABOUT THESE TEACHERS

Jing-Jing Lee was born and raised in Singapore. She holds a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford. How We Disappeared (Oneworld 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 Singapore Literature Prize and long-listed for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the HWA Debut Crown.

Karen Kao is a teacher with the International Writers’ Collective. She is the author of the novel The Dancing Girl and the Turtle, a work of historical fiction set in 1930s Shanghai. Her short story “Mrs Yip” will appear in an anthology of Asian literature in 2021. Karen’s short-form work has been published in The Common (US), Nunum (Canada), The Shanghai Literary Review (China) and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong). Karen has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the VERA and Best of the Net.

ABOUT OUR MASTER CLASS SERIES

In this series, working writers talk tips, tricks and techniques with a focus on a single novel or collection. The classes are conducted in an interview format with plenty of room for questions. Check out our podcast archive to listen to recordings of previous Master Classes with writers such as A.M. Homes, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction; Kristen Roupenian, author of the viral short story “Cat Person”; and Jennifer Clement, PEN International president.