E. W. Cole Lecture: Alice Pung on Keeping Calm & Carrying On

What does it take to keep showing up to the blank page? Alice Pung offers reasons for optimism in this year’s E. W. Cole Lecture. Two decades ago, Alice Pung published Unpolished Gem, a funny, loving and irreverent portrait of a migrant family’s everyday struggles and bittersweet triumphs. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of her debut, Pung presents this year’s E. W. Cole Lecture on a topic near to her heart: fundamentals of writing and the circumstances under which writers practice their craft. Drawing on her knowledge from writing 15 books across contemporary fiction, YA, children’s literature and non-fiction, she examines the work that goes into the act of creation and what it takes to carry on writing. Pung speaks on the quiet power of turning up through crises, changing political situations and tastes, and what makes it worthwhile: how writing and reading can help us make sense of our lives and the world at large. An in-conversation with host Marina Sano follows the lecture.