From Ubud with Love (and Literary Pretensions).

From the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival we have 18-year-old Indonesian author Vira Safitri, who's already had two of her books published:

Asked how long it took to write her first novel, "Secret Admirer", a giggling Safitri said: "Four days and three nights."

"And in another week's time I had a publisher," she added.

There's been a spate of young writers in the media recently, hasn't there?

The article continues on about how Asia is "trying to reclaim its literary heritage". Seems the in-thing for an Asian writer to do is to write about Asian issues like "the repression of women, the politics of the hijab, political dissidence and eastern mythology".

Speaking of the politics of hijab, Dina Zaman (who's currently in Ubud with Sharon) gets to chip in a few words:

Malaysian writer Dina Zaman, who writes a column about Muslim life in Malaysia called "I am Muslim," said she wanted to write from the perspective of a modern Malay woman.

"Being a modern Malay woman could mean anything. I don't wear a hijab, I expose my legs, but I pray five times a day," said the glamorous young writer, sitting in a huge Balinese style gazebo perched at the edge of a hill overlooking lush paddy fields.