Seeing Ghosts: Pio Abad & Susan Barker
In an event presented with ESEA Lit Fest, artist Pio Abad and novelist Susan Barker discuss political histories and the spectral with Romalyn Ante.
Shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2024, Pio Abad makes work concerning the personal and political entanglements of objects; mining repressed historical events, it offers counternarratives that draw out threads of complicity between incidents, ideologies and people. Informed by unfolding events in the Philippines, where he was born and raised, his work emanates from a family narrative woven into the nation’s story. He has exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; 58th Carnegie International; the fifth Kochi-Muziris Biennale; and Ateneo Art Gallery, Manila.
Susan Barker’s novel The Incarnations was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Notable Book, and shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. An excerpt from her new novel, Old Soul, won a Northern Writers’ Award for Fiction in 2020. Barker is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Romalyn Ante is an award-winning Filipino-British poet, author and editor. She was born and bred in Lipa, Philippines and migrated to the UK when she was 16. Her debut collection, Antiemetic for Homesickness (Chatto, 2020), was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second collection, AGIMAT (Chatto, 2024), was awarded the Arthur Welton Award, and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and The Observer Poetry Book of the Month. She currently sits on the editorial board for Poetry London.
Supported by Paper Literary, 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.
Presented in association with ESEA Lit Fest, and supported by Paper Literary.
Need to know
For your visit
This event is held at the Purcell Room Southbank Centre
The Purcell Room is located in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which is open from 90 minutes before events start until they finish. It’s closed at all other times.
Plan your visit
The Purcell Room is an auditorium located within our Queen Elizabeth Hall.
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Food & drink
From coffee to cocktails, filling favourites to fine dining, plus some of London’s best street food – it’s all here at the Southbank Centre.