Ask the Author: Jon Gresham
Answered Questions (10)
Jon Gresham
Yes, actually I do!
It's about a Raffles Banded Langur who just wants to get home to Bukit Timah. An epic tale of freedom and failure, cannibals and nursing care.
Here is the Good reads page for my novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
You can pre-order it here: https://epigrambookshop.sg/products/gus
It's about a Raffles Banded Langur who just wants to get home to Bukit Timah. An epic tale of freedom and failure, cannibals and nursing care.
Here is the Good reads page for my novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
You can pre-order it here: https://epigrambookshop.sg/products/gus
Jon Gresham
Crumbs. Thanks for the great question. I didn't even know I had a sense of humour :) Big hugs
Jon Gresham
"Gresham's surrealistic stories, at their best, shake us from within, and deepen the notion that we are islands of consciousness ... We Rose Up Slowly is an absorbing and disturbing read definitely worth spending an afternoon with."
Sam Ng, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, July 2016
"Gresham’s beautifully subtle prose bears within it the sense of something devastating, something tumultuous, something painfully moving; this something he never quite articulates and yet surely we recognise it.”
Cheryl Julia Lee, My Book of the Year, Singapore Poetry
More at http://igloomelts.com/media-reviews/
Sam Ng, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, July 2016
"Gresham’s beautifully subtle prose bears within it the sense of something devastating, something tumultuous, something painfully moving; this something he never quite articulates and yet surely we recognise it.”
Cheryl Julia Lee, My Book of the Year, Singapore Poetry
More at http://igloomelts.com/media-reviews/
Jon Gresham
- Hmmm. Is this a question about narrative theory or whether I have cycled into the sea or chopped off anyone’s finger with a miniature guillotine?
- These stories are not autobiographical. This is fiction. Writer’s lie. It’s a mistake to privilege the author or idealise their role and intentions too much. The text is all. The reader is everything.
- There are, however, aspects of the writer’s personality and experience built, baked or bleeding into their narrator and characters.
- Events and episodes plucked from Jon Gresham's life include:
1) The experience of unrequited love (We Rose Up Slowly). Loving someone more than they love you. On reflection and in time you realise it was for the best you never ended up together.
2) Not knowing WTF your doing with your life (Rashid at the Sail). On reflection and in time you realise that’s part of the the exhilaration of being alive.
3) Casual racism (Idiot and Dog). On reflection and in time hopefully you realise, and reflect on your cognitive dissonance, prejudice and privilege.
- Isn't the more important question about these stories is not whether they are autobiographical - because this privileges the author too much. Isn’t it a more important question to ask: who is the reader? And what does this text mean to them? How does it change the answer the question the reader asks, when he/she puts down this book: what am i going to do next?
- See more at: http://igloomelts.com/qa-9
- These stories are not autobiographical. This is fiction. Writer’s lie. It’s a mistake to privilege the author or idealise their role and intentions too much. The text is all. The reader is everything.
- There are, however, aspects of the writer’s personality and experience built, baked or bleeding into their narrator and characters.
- Events and episodes plucked from Jon Gresham's life include:
1) The experience of unrequited love (We Rose Up Slowly). Loving someone more than they love you. On reflection and in time you realise it was for the best you never ended up together.
2) Not knowing WTF your doing with your life (Rashid at the Sail). On reflection and in time you realise that’s part of the the exhilaration of being alive.
3) Casual racism (Idiot and Dog). On reflection and in time hopefully you realise, and reflect on your cognitive dissonance, prejudice and privilege.
- Isn't the more important question about these stories is not whether they are autobiographical - because this privileges the author too much. Isn’t it a more important question to ask: who is the reader? And what does this text mean to them? How does it change the answer the question the reader asks, when he/she puts down this book: what am i going to do next?
- See more at: http://igloomelts.com/qa-9
Jon Gresham
Many of the events and ideas in my most recent book, a collection of short stories We Rose Up Slowly, were inspired by topical events found in Singaporean newspapers, online blogs and forums. For example, inspiration is drawn from the tragic car crash when a Ferrari collided with a taxi at the intersection of Rochor & Victoria Roads, the problems caused by deer, boars, monkeys and other wild creatures leaving the jungle and encroaching on the urban areas of Singapore, the controversy over the road development at Bukit Brown cemetery, the last years of patriarchs, the lives of domestic workers, and the imagined regret of writers who have left their home country in search of a better life elsewhere.
Other sources of inspiration were incidents, fragments of emotion and memories gleaned from the author’s life including failed romances, missed connections, and growing up lost, always plagued by the delusion that better things were happening to far more undeserving people elsewhere.
Other sources of inspiration were incidents, fragments of emotion and memories gleaned from the author’s life including failed romances, missed connections, and growing up lost, always plagued by the delusion that better things were happening to far more undeserving people elsewhere.
Jon Gresham
Read a lot and listen to podcasts on books and writing e.g. The New Yorker, BBC World Book Club, LARB, London Review of Books, Guardian Books podcast.
Jon Gresham
A non fiction book about foreign workers in Singapore and a novella set in Bangkok and Sydney.
Jon Gresham
Keep writing everyday. Build habits and discipline. Don't be too hard on yourself. Don't judge your first draft. Inherit or win the lottery to achieve financial independence.
Jon Gresham
You can go to work in your pyjamas.
Jon Gresham
Get out of my chair, stretch, leave the desk and the screen behind and go for a jog.
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