Siang Lu’s debut novel, The Whitewash, is a searing black comedy about the whitewashing of the Asian film industry and ‘a scathing satire of the big-budget film industry’s ethnic and racial myopia‘ (The Conversation). In this session Siang will speak with Dr Chris Lin to unpack the connections between power, politics, profit and racial stereotyping, and consider what can be done to shift the needle towards mainstream cultural acceptance of Asians in film and TV.
Siang Lu’s fiction and literary reviews have appeared in Southerly and Westerly. He holds a Master of Letters from the University of Sydney. He has written for television on Malaysia’s Astro network. In 2021, Siang won the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer for The Whitewash. He has been the program manager for a global, multi-million-dollar initiative to deliver cutting edge AI solutions to the legal industry. He is based in Brisbane, Australia and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Dr Chris Lin curates local events centred on the arts, literature and social justice, and on the cultures and politics of Myanmar, the place of his birth. His writing has appeared in Peril Magazine, Portside Review and the Australian Book Review. He holds a PhD in English from The University of Western Australia and works for the UWA Public Policy Institute, translating and communicating research to inform public policy.
