Lucas Stewart's Blog

Extremely proud to be a part of these wonderful four short stories on the Myanmar coup published by Adi Magazine. Written by writers in Myanmar and translated into English by Eiandra Ko Ko, they each describe a powerful glimpse into the first weeks of the coup and the sacrifices made to resist.

Read them all at Adi Magazine

Artwork credit to Thu Ra Kyaw

On this day three months ago, the military fucked the country it proclaims it protects.  

When I started Sadaik back in 2012, before the censorship had been lifted, I posted anonymously at first. I didn’t really know what the site was going to be or what it could do but it has evolved over the last ten years, in some ways mirroring Myanmar’s paths over the same time. At its heart though has always been to give literature from Myanmar a wider voice.   

I have spent the last three months loo...

Myself and my project partner, Nhkum Bawk Nu Awng have been working on this for nearly a year now and we are delighted to officially announce the launch of a brand new literature project: Kachin: Stories from an Uncivil War.

Kachin: Stories from an Uncivil War is an anthology of 12 short stories and 12 essays in the Jinghpaw language exploring how the civil war is impacting the Kachin community …

READ ON TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WHY THIS PROJECT IT IS IMPORTANT

With the breakdown in June...

Printing presses are rarely a source of interest in Britain, unless you somehow find yourself in possession of an original press owned by perhaps Gutenburg or Claxton.  Publishing houses, yes.  Especially those historical ones passed down through familial generations …

In Myanmar, it is different.  Publishing houses tend to go hand in hand, the printer was also the publisher, at least during the colonial administration (and still today with the likes if Seikku Cho Cho).  And some of these...

Maung Yin Maung and Ma Me Ma by James Hla Gyaw is widely regarded as the first novel written by a citizen of Myanmar, and yet in the introduction to the first English translation produced in 2014, it is described as ‘a novel being the first in the language.’

Now that is quite a twisted way to describe the first novel from Myanmar, unless, of course, it isn’t.  It is the first novel in Myanmar written in Burmese. 

An earlier novel, probably the true ‘first’ novel ever written b...

Covid 19 may have forced the bookshops in Yangon to close, but that hasn’t stopped the publication of this year’s most anticipated book …

The Guys of Rangoon 1930 by Khett Zaw has become an online phenomenon in Myanmar.  Originally serialised in chunks on Facebook, the page soon garnered over 75,000 followers in a matter of weeks. 

Following the life of a real gangster, Lanmadaw Pho Tote in 1930’s Rangoon, early reviews on Goodreads and elsewhere have praised the book for its research,...

The first time I saw it, the pages had already yellowed with age.  The olive-green cover had faded and the binding had gone, the pages held together with sticky tape.  She pulled it from a packet sleeve, kept in a cupboard in a back room …

An historic Shan town, built at the foot of the Northern Chin hills and the last town before the Tamu/Moreh border with India, Kalay had seen few foreign visitors before the transition.  With both the border and the Chin Hills closed to those without pe...

Myanmar has yet to face the overwhelming and savage force of centralised, literary capitalism.  All bookshops in the country, with the exception of those owned by the state, are ‘independent’.  There are no national chains listed on a stock exchange.  No Barnes and Noble.  No Waterstones.  There is a Kinokuniya but it has not yet dared venture beyond the safety of the new International airport terminal …

This has given Myanmar a fairly unique scene in which bookshops – and there are many ...

Just a quick reminder that i will be appearing at the Writing on the Wall Lockdown literary festival online tomorrow at 6.00 pm UK time/11.30 pm Myanmar time …

Myself and two other contributors to the Resist: Stories of Uprising short story anthology, Julia Bell and Karline Smith, will be reading from our stories and chatting to Mike Morris, the co-founder and director of the festival about acts of resistance and uprisings. The session will be done live over zoom and broadcast over Faceb...

I am delighted to announce that I been invited to appear at the Writing on the Wall literary festival on 21st May. With the global lock-down, the Liverpool based festival has moved online and is free for everyone to watch

The festival will feature American icon Noam Chomsky, author Irvine Welsh, multi award-winning writer A. L. Kennedy and many, many more amazing writers, playwrights, poets including myself and fellow Resist contributors Julia Bell and Karline Smith plus the WoW festival...