ESEA Lit Fest Finale: An Evening with Phil Wang
At the closing night of ESEA Lit Fest, writer and actor Phil Wang talks about his memoir Sidesplitter and what it means to be torn between two continents.
British-Malaysian stand-up comedian, writer and actor Phil Wang talks to Zing Tsjeng about using comedy and storytelling as a way of skewering the cultural narratives and tropes around diasporic identity.
Phil Wang released his first Netflix special, Philly Philly Wang Wang, in 2021 and has since performed stand-up on Late Night with Seth Meyers (NBC), been interviewed by chat show royalty on That’s My Time with David Letterman (Netflix), and his first book Sidesplitter: How to be from Two Worlds at Once was named a Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year. His second Netflix special, Wang in There, Baby!, lands in September.
Zing Tsjeng is a journalist, editor, writer and presenter. She is the former editor-in-chief of VICE and presents the BBC podcast Good Bad Billionaire. In 2023, Brazen reissued her four-book series Forgotten Women, which explores the untold stories of inspiring women who have been marginalised from history.
Marking the UK’s fifth ESEA Heritage Month this September, ESEA Lit Fest is a joyful, thought-provoking celebration of East and South East Asian literature and culture that’s open to all. It was launched in 2023 to sell-out success by Maria Garbutt-Lucero and Joanna Lee, co-founders of the ESEA Publishing Network, in partnership with Foyles. The festival is supported by Hachette UK and their employee network THRIVE, Paper Literary and the Bagri Foundation.
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Dates & times
22 Sep 2024, 7.30pm
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1 hour and 30 minutes (approx)
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