Tag Archives: media studies

Asian Women of Achievement Awards – I’ve been shortlisted!

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I’m very honored to have been shortlisted for the prestigious Asian Women of Achievement Awards in the Social and Humanitarian category, for my work on the issue of sexual assault and consent, including launching the Clear Lines Festival.  The awards are meant ‘to celebrate the often unsung Asian heroines of British life’ so… hey, I appreciate that!  Awards evening is May 12 at the London Hilton on Park Lane.  Looking forward to it!

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Speaking of Clear Lines, we’ve recently sent out our Spring 2016 newsletter, which you can read here.  And on March 12, I had the opportunity to run an important discussion group on sexual assault and abuse at the Women of the World Festival (WOW) at the South Bank Centre, on behalf of Clear Lines.  This followed the Sexual Assault and Abuse: Giving Testimony session, where I spoke on the panel, chaired by Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of the South Bank Centre. Overall, WOW was a fantastic weekend, full of inspiring talks and performances, addressing all sorts of issues related to achieving greater gender equality. Many thanks especially to the survivors, witnesses, and supporters who came shared, listened, and spoke out at our discussion group.

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Leading up to WOW, I wrote this opinion piece for The Huffington Post on the Oscars — did you notice the issue of sexual abuse was center-stage at the Academy Awards this year?  That’s progress!  As well as this blog post for Polis: Journalism and Society at the LSE, on the importance of celebrity, solidarity, and activism around sexual assault.

For now, I’m off to New England and New York for a short break, and will be back in London in mid-April… whereupon I’ll have to start working on my PhD upgrade in earnest. Lots of exciting things happening at the Department of Media and Communications at the LSE – we were recently ranked 3rd best Media Studies Department in the world… Not too shabby, eh?

 

A Swedish book deal & my current PhD research at the LSE

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Happy 2016!  This update is very overdue, but I haven’t had much spare time these past few months, ever since starting my PhD.  But more on that later…

The first bit of exciting news is that my debut novel Dark Chapter has its first publication deal — it’ll be coming out in Sweden in Spring 2017 thanks to Norstedts, one of Sweden’s most prestigious publishing houses.  They also publish Margaret Atwood, Elena Ferrante, Colm Tóibín, and they discovered Stieg Larsson, so it’s not bad company to be in! The deal was listed at the top of Publishers Weekly Hot International Book Properties in November. I’m looking forward to publishers making the book available in other countries… I hope you are, too!

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Alongside my creative writing, I’ve begun my PhD at the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. I’ll be researching the impact of social media on the public dialogue about rape and sexual assault — a very topical subject, and obviously, one which I feel strongly about, given my own experience and exploration of the issue. You can watch a video and read an article on my research here:

At the end of October, I spoke at the Feminism in London Conference, as a nominee for the annual Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize.  I didn’t win in the end, but it was an honor to be at the awards ceremony, both as an Individual Award nominee and as a representative of the Clear Lines Festival (nominated for the Group Award).  To have the chance to meet the other shortlisted women — and hear about their collective efforts working against gender-based violence — was nothing short of inspiring.

Me and Kate Llewellyn representing Clear Lines

Me and Kate Llewellyn representing Clear Lines

Speaking of Clear Lines, we have begun to release videos from the festival online.  You can watch them for free here, including videos of me speaking on the panel about news coverage of sexual assault, commenting on what it’s like to have your own rape reported in the media.   There’s also videos from our Spoken Word Night, featuring some very talented poets, and more videos will pop up over the next few months.

You can read my end-of-2015 round-up here.  Looking forward to what 2016 will bring!