The turning point: Siang Lu

Memorable people and places, chance moments, and inspiring works of art find their way into the words writers produce. Authors of all stages can pinpoint things that have altered the course of their creative lives. They can often say, ‘That was where it changed for me.’  

In this new series, we invite authors across Australia to reflect on three turning points that have shaped them, offering us glimpses into how each writer was made.  

This post comes from the talented, smart and slightly bizarre mind of novelist Siang Lu. After receiving the Glendower Award in 2021, Siang's debut novel The Whitewash recently won a prestigious Australian Industry Book Award for Audiobook of the Year – just one of the turning points in his writing past. 

A person

I met Jonathan Galassi at Brisbane Writers Festival in 2015. Jonathan was then the President and Publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG), which published such works from amazing authors I love: Joan Didion, Jonathan Franzen, Paul Beatty, Donald Antrim. The list goes on. Jonathan had been doing the festival circuit as part of a tour for his debut novel, Muse, and in addition had agreed to be involved in BWF's '20 Pages in 20 Minutes' program, in which a publishing expert reads 20 pages of a writer's work, and provides feedback. 
 
I remember applying for it, selecting Jonathan as my preferred expert, and, at the penultimate moment before hitting Enter, in a completely unconscious act, I said aloud, "I hope I don't get this." I'll never know what possessed me to say that.

But I did get it and proceeded to have a 3-week-long heart attack preparing what I'd say. I needn't have worried. Jonathan was lovely, promised to consider the full manuscript for FSG, and was kind enough to let me use his name as a referral for the US market. 
 
That manuscript never did make it to the US market – such is the writing life, and a story for another day. But meeting Jonathan was pivotal in developing my self-belief as a writer. It's kind of like being the Mandalorian, who goes around collecting bits of Beskar armour, upgrading yourself, completing yourself along the way. Hearing Jonathan's words was like receiving a major piece of my writer's armour. 
 
He said: "You're a good writer." I could've died happy then. I still could die, even today. 

A piece of art 

The following is an excerpt from a piece I've been working on. It's about Jackson Pollock – not any of his individual pieces of art, but rather the floor of his studio space. Seeing it had a profound effect on me. 

I took the tour of Jackson Pollock’s studio a few years ago in New York. That was a great experience. Great tour guide. Maria had this way of whispering and tiptoeing around the place that made us feel as though we should too. You could see that she really revered the spot, as though the studio were somehow mythical to her, like some special place that might itself inspire art. It reminded me of the story of how Stephen King wrote Misery at Rudyard Kipling's desk. Or how musicians seem to channel The Beatles when they record at Abbey Road Studios. It's the site of significance, you know? It's Kerouac's scroll of On The Road. It's the object imbued with meaning.

Yuan says, “In the absence of the creator, we revere her tools.” 

“Yes! Exactly, where is that from?” 

“It’s from nowhere. Me. I just made it up.” 

But what was I going to say? Ah, the guide. Maria showed us how Pollock would lay his canvases flat on the ground and he’d drip and flick paint on them from above. That was his method. Dozens and dozens of canvases. How, over the years, the studio's floor became soaked through with colour. The aftermath from his works. I remember looking at the floor, the thing that made my heart leap was this. It looks just like his art. Or at least it seems indistinguishable from his art. All the accumulated paint that seeped through, the spatters that fell beyond the canvas and stained the floor forever. Was there intent there? Surely, at some point, over time, he must have known. Must have become aware of the resemblance. 

What I was on the cusp of being able to say to Yuan then, on the street, halfway between the gallery and the ruins of G3, and what I did say to her eventually, much, much later, once, after emerging from the shower, brow furrowed, eyes down, because it is much easier to remember the order of words like that, a mini speech practised in my head, and it's part of the fabric now, the way she laughed, finally realising what the hell I was on about ("Are you talking about Pollock's floor again?") was that if you are living a life aligned towards art – the making of it, the receiving of it – then the patterns you leave in your wake, whether you are aware of them or not, whether you intend them to be or not, will be as indistinguishable from the art itself. 

A moment 

It's got to be Thursday 25 May. The 2023 ABIAs, when the audiobook for The Whitewash won Audiobook of the Year. It was a stacked shortlist. Hannah Gadsby, Grace Tame, Nat's What I Reckon, and Lisa Curry were all up for best audiobook as well. I was the fifth guy, whose name nobody could pronounce. In fact, I was so certain that the award was going to one of the celebs that I was completely relaxed and enjoying a glass of wine at the precise moment that my name was called out. Cue the spit take. 

I'm so stoked that The Whitewash won this award and not just for my own gratification. Even before this award, The Whitewash made publishing history as the first Australian audiobook to star a diverse cast of fourteen actors, ten of whom have Asian ethnicity. The whole point of the book was to champion for more, and better, representation for minorities in the media, and the fact that we were able to pull together such a large, talented and diverse cast, was an instance of being able to put our money where our mouths were. Hopefully the ABIA win can help the audiobook reach a wider audience! 

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 his manuscript The Whitewash, which was published by UQP in 2022.  The Whitewash was Shortlisted for the 2023 NSW Premier's Literary Awards – Multicultural NSW Award. Wavesound brought Siang’s mockumentary novel to life with The Whitewash: The Audiobook, a multi-cast audio drama from the SquareSound Studios starring fourteen actors and has won the 2023 ABIA – Audiobook of the Year. Siang is the co-creator of The Beige Index. He is based in Brisbane, Australia, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.