Sheung-King & JeeMin Kim – Black Box Writers’ Series (Spring 2026)
Sheung-King, a Canadian-Chinese novelist, and JeeMin Kim, a South Korean artist, join us for the durational performance Displaced Nostalgia: Temporality. In the performance, time follows JeeMin Kim’s rhythm, with live writing from Sheung-King, and audience participation. The audience is welcome to drop in freely to observe and take part at your own pace.
This session is presented with the Hong Kong International Literary Festival.
Date: March 27, 2026 (Friday)
Time: 10:00am – 5:00pm
No registration is required. Come and go as you wish and take part at your own pace — everyone is welcome.
Venue: HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location map)
Sheung-King is a novelist. His novel BATSHIT SEVEN, published by Penguin Random House, won the 2024 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His debut novel, You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked (Book*hug Press, 2020), is a finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Award, a finalist for the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award, longlisted for CBC’s Canada Reads 2021, and named one of the best book debuts of 2020 by The Globe and Mail. Sheung-King was born in Vancouver and grew up in Hong Kong.
JeeMin Kim is an artist with a BA from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, an MA in Critical Practice from the Royal College of Art, London, and a PhD in Painting from Hong Ik University. Her ongoing research and solo exhibition series, Prototype Temple, unfolds within constructed stage-like spaces where forms of various civilisations and ruins are layered together. The project questions the fictive nostalgia produced by Western archaeology and colonial perspectives. Kim’s works have also been featured at Horse Hospital Gallery, London (2019); Arts Council Korea (2021); Culture Station Seoul 284 and Namsan Library, Seoul (2023); and KL Museum, Seoul (2024).
The Black Box Writers’ Series celebrates creative voices and craft, with a focus on writers and works with local connections. Featured guests present their latest work and discuss their creative practice with the moderator and audience. All are welcome.
Convenor & Moderator: Dr Antony Huen
The Hong Kong International Literary Festival (HKILF) inspires the joy of reading by bringing the world’s writers and stories to Hong Kong’s diverse communities. A dynamic year-round programme and an annual festival offer dialogue, entertainment and perspective, while the Young Readers Festival motivates students to engage with all aspects of the written word, improving communication skills, while nurturing the art of writing and storytelling. The annual festival features established and emerging writers from around the world, alongside local literary talents, in a programme that includes panel discussions, book talks, readings, workshops, walks, school programmes, performances, and more.
HKILF is a registered charity non-profit organisation championing stories, words and language in Hong Kong. To find out more, please visit their official website: https://www.festival.org.hk.
More information about Sheung-King can be viewed from here.
More information about JeeMin Kim can be viewed from here.
Emma Pei Yin – Black Box Writers’ Series (Spring 2026)
Emma Pei Yin, an Australian-Chinese writer and editor, joins us to discuss her novel When Sleeping Women Wake. The book follows the lives of three women who fled to Hong Kong under British colonial rule when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded the city, and the talk will explore historical fiction as a genre that navigates documented history and narrative reconstruction. Emma will be in conversation with Dr Antony Huen, followed by an audience Q&A. This session is a collaboration with the Hong Kong International Literary Festival (March 1-8, 2026).
Date: March 6, 2026 (Friday)
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Venue: HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location map)
Registration is required and no walk-ins are allowed due to limited seatings. Successful registrants will be informed in due course.
- For HKU members (HKU Portal login is required): https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=105468
Emma is an Australian-Chinese writer and editor. Her debut novel, When Sleeping Women Wake, has been published globally, translated into multiple languages. It was longlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize (2025) and shortlisted for the Australian Indie Book Awards (2026). She is the founder of yinfluence editorial, an agency supporting PoC, queer and neurodivergent writers by connecting them with editors and mentors who understand the stakes of telling stories from the margins. She also co-hosts Served With Rice Poddy, a cultural podcast and visual series that centres conversations about books, publishing, identity and community through food-infused discussion.
The Black Box Writers’ Series celebrates creative voices and craft, with a focus on writers and works with local connections. Featured guests present their latest work and discuss their creative practice with the moderator and audience. All are welcome.
Convenor & Moderator: Dr Antony Huen
The Hong Kong International Literary Festival inspires the joy of reading by bringing the world’s writers and stories to Hong Kong’s diverse communities. A dynamic year-round programme and an annual festival offer dialogue, entertainment and perspective, while the Young Readers Festival motivates students to engage with all aspects of the written word, improving communication skills, while nurturing the art of writing and storytelling. The annual festival features established and emerging writers from around the world, alongside local literary talents, in a programme that includes panel discussions, book talks, readings, workshops, walks, school programmes, performances, and more.
HKILF is a registered charity non-profit organisation championing stories, words and language in Hong Kong. To find out more, please visit their official website: https://www.festival.org.hk.
More information about Emma Pei Yin can be viewed from here.
Eric Choi – Black Box Writers’ Series (Spring 2026)
Eric Choi, a Hong Kong-born aerospace engineer, writer, and editor based in Canada, joins us to discuss his sci-fi story collection Just Like Being There. The collection features fifteen of his sci-fi and alternate history stories, including the Aurora Award-winning “Crimson Sky”. Each story is accompanied by an afterword that explains the underlying scientific principles. He will discuss how his short fiction engages with topics such as space exploration, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial intelligence. He will be in conversation with Dr Antony Huen, with time for audience exchange.
Date: February 27, 2026 (Friday)
Time: 10:30am – 12:00noon
Venue: Online via Zoom
Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent via email.
- For HKU members (HKU Portal login is required): https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=105293
- For non-HKU members: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=105293
Eric was born in Hong Kong and emigrated to Canada at a young age with his family. He has twice won Canada’s Aurora Award, for his short story “Crimson Sky” and the Chinese-themed speculative fiction anthology The Dragon and the Stars, and he received a Sidewise Award for his alternate history novelette “A Sky and a Heaven”. With the late Ben Bova, he co-edited the hard SF anthology Carbide Tipped Pens. His short fiction collection Just Like Being There was released in 2022.
The Black Box Writers’ Series celebrates creative voices and craft, with a focus on writers and works with local connections. Featured guests present their latest work and discuss their creative practice with the moderator and audience. All are welcome.
Convenor & Moderator: Dr Antony Huen
More information about Eric Choi can be viewed from here.
Rajat Sharma – Black Box Writers’ Series (Spring 2026)
Rajat Sharma joins us to screen and discuss his short film Never Brooklyn, a documentary shaped by his search for housing in Hong Kong and his move into a subdivided flat in Sham Shui Po. Through encounters with its residents, the film reflects on working-class communities, migrant experiences, and the divides created by redevelopment. He will discuss the film as an exploration of liminality, identity reconstruction, and historical documentation. He will be in conversation with Dr Antony Huen, with time for audience exchange.
Date: February 13, 2026 (Friday)
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm
No registration is required. Seats are available on first-come, first-served basis.
Venue: HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location map)
Rajat is a scholar-filmmaker from Delhi. His creative practice centres on documentary and experimental film, with screenings and exhibitions at Animateka (Slovenia), BPC New York (US), Freiburger Filmforum (Germany), Trowbridge Town Hall (UK), the Hong Kong Arts Centre, and other international venues. His work examines the entanglements between popular cinema and the nation-state, with a focus on decolonial thought, subversive and queer imaginaries, gendered representation, and affective publics. He is a doctoral candidate at Hong Kong Baptist University.
The Black Box Writers’ Series celebrates creative voices and craft, with a focus on writers and works with local connections. Featured guests present their latest work and discuss their creative practice with the moderator and audience. All are welcome.
Convenor & Moderator: Dr Antony Huen
Daryl Lim Wei Jie – Black Box Writers’ Series (Spring 2026)
Daryl Lim Wei Jie joins us to discuss his latest work, Mistranslations from a Future Vernacular, a collection which poses the provocation: “How many times can you rewrite a poem?” Using Oulipo techniques and newer technologies such as LLMs, Daryl rewrites a single poem again and again. He will discuss the book as an exploration of iterative rewriting and exhaustion as method, and how (mis)translation can be a creative generative act. He will be in conversation with Dr Antony Huen, with time for audience exchange.
Date: January 30, 2026 (Friday)
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm
No registration is required. Seats are available on first-come, first-served basis.
Venue: HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location map)
Daryl is an award-winning poet, editor, translator, and literary critic based in Singapore. His collections of poetry include Mistranslations from a Future Vernacular (2025) and Anything but Human (2021), the latter shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. In 2023, he received the Young Artist Award, Singapore's highest honour for artists under 35.
The Black Box Writers’ Series celebrates creative voices and craft, with a focus on writers and works with local connections. Featured guests present their latest work and discuss their creative practice with the moderator and audience. All are welcome.
Convenor & Moderator: Dr Antony Huen
More information about Daryl Lim Wei Jie can be viewed from here.
Peter Kennedy – Black Box Writers’ Series (Autumn 2025)
Dr. Peter Kennedy will reflect on the creation of his second volume of verse HERE, where poetry and prose converge. He will also engage in discussion about his broader creative practice.
Date: November 18, 2025 (Tuesday)
Time: 7:30pm – 9:00pm
No registration is required. Seats are available on first-come, first-served basis.
Venue: HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location map)
Dr. Peter Kennedy was born in the Roman city of Chester near the Welsh border. He is of Irish and Welsh extraction. He has worked in Hong Kong since 1988. He holds degrees from the universities of Bristol, Sussex, Wales, Essex and Trinity College Dublin.
Peter has taught in England, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Saudi Arabia, China, Brunei and Hong Kong and has been a (literature) teacher for 40 years. Until 2012, he was Associate Professor at the School of Professional and Continuing Education, HKU in charge of a broad range of programmes from Diploma to doctorate levels. Peter is now Honorary Associate Professor in the School of English, HKU. He teaches modules in the (full-time) B.A. programme. These include: Joyce’s Voices, Introduction to C20th English Poetry and C21st English Poetry.
His five books and his journal articles have been mainly concerned with adult learning and learning English through literature. Recent creative writing has appeared in the (London) Literary Review and the (US) James Joyce Quarterly.
During the Autumn Semester, the three featured writers join us in the HKU Black Box to reflect on the creation of their latest publications and engage in discussion about their broader creative practice. Please refer to our poster for the schedule of the Series.
The biography of Dr. Peter Kennedy can be viewed from here.
Sanjena Sathian – Black Box Writers’ Series (Autumn 2025)
Ms. Sanjena Sathian will reflect on the creation of her latest novel Goddess Complex (University of Iowa Press), a top anticipated book of 2025 by TIME. She will also engage in discussion about her broader creative practice.
Date: October 21, 2025 (Tuesday)
Time: 7:30pm – 9:00pm
No registration is required. Seats are available on first-come, first-served basis.
Venue: HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location map)
Sanjena Sathian is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Goddess Complex and Gold Diggers, both published by Penguin Press. Goddess Complex, released in March of 2025, was named a top anticipated book of the year by TIME and has been named a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Gold Diggers was named a Top 10 Best Book of 2021 by the Washington Post and longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Sanjena’s short fiction appears in The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic, One Story, and more. She’s written nonfiction for The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Drift, The Yale Review, and NewYorker.com, among other outlets.
During the Autumn Semester, the three featured writers join us in the HKU Black Box to reflect on the creation of their latest publications and engage in discussion about their broader creative practice. Please refer to our poster for the schedule of the Series.
More information about Ms. Sanjena Sathian from her official website here.
James Shea – Black Box Writers’ Series (Autumn 2025)
Professor James Shea will reflect on the creation of his latest collection Last Day of My Face (University of Iowa Press), winner of the 2024 Iowa Poetry Prize. He will also engage in discussion about his broader creative practice.
Date: September 30, 2025 (Tuesday)
Time: 7:30pm – 9:00pm
No registration is required. Seats are available on first-come, first-served basis.
Venue: HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location map)
Professoor James Shea is the author of Last Day of My Face (University of Iowa Press), selected by Brenda Shaughnessy for the 2024 Iowa Poetry Prize. His previous collections include The Lost Novel (Fence Books) and Star in the Eye, selected by Nick Flynn for the Fence Modern Poets Series. He is the translator of Applause for a Cloud (Black Ocean), a collection of contemporary Japanese poetry by Sayumi Kamakura. He co-edited The Routledge Global Haiku Reader (Routledge) and co-translated Moving a Stone: Selected Poems of Yam Gong (Zephyr Press). He directs the bilingual creative writing program at Hong Kong Baptist University and has received grants from the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, National Endowment for the Arts, and Vermont Arts Council.
During the Autumn Semester, the three featured writers join us in the HKU Black Box to reflect on the creation of their latest publications and engage in discussion about their broader creative practice. Please refer to our poster for the schedule of the Series.
The biography of Professor James Shea can be viewed from here.
Thomas Bird – Black Box Writers’ Series (Spring 2025)
Thomas Bird reads from Harmony Express: Travel by Train Through China (Earnshaw Books, 2023).
Date: April 23, 2025 (Wednesday)
Time: 5:00pm – 6:30pm
No registration is required. Seats are available on first-come, first-served basis.
Venue: HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location map)
The Series is part of the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing in English, directed by Dr Antony Huen. During the Spring Semester, internationally acclaimed writers join us in the Black Box to read from their work and discuss their creative practice. Please refer to our poster for the schedule of the Series.
More information about Thomas Bird from his official website here
Sheung-King – Black Box Writers’ Series (Spring 2025)
Sheung-King reads from Batshit Seven (Penguin Canada, 2024), winner of the 2024 Writers' Trust Atwood Gibson Fiction Prize.
Date: April 9, 2025 (Wednesday)
Time: 5:00pm – 6:30pm
No registration is required. Seats are available on first-come, first-served basis.
Venue: HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location map)
The Series is part of the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing in English, directed by Dr Antony Huen. During the Spring Semester, internationally acclaimed writers join us in the Black Box to read from their work and discuss their creative practice. Please refer to our poster for the schedule of the Series.
More information about Sheung-King from his official website here
