'Ronggeng-Ronggeng' and the literary impresario of Malaysia

Malachi Edwin Vethamani charts Malaysia’s short story landscape with his anthology in English, to be launched at the George Town Literary Fest this month.

Very few writers have time for this. But if the challenging publishing world of local English writing has a term for it, Malachi Edwin Vethamani has unconsciously become a literary impresario.

With the grizzled grey-bearded look and the occasional penetrating gaze from behind his spectacles, Vethamani can seem unsettling as he discusses the upheavals and developments in the local English short story writing scene.