Writing across/between borders: a transnational approach to creative writing in the Asia Pacific

When postcolonial studies made its debut in Western academes, it was, to use Stuart Hall’s words, ‘the bearer of such powerful unconscious investments — a sign of desire for some, and equally for others, a sign of danger’. It is a similar reaction of apprehension and excitement that Creative Writing generates in the Asian Pacific academes and cultures, especially in countries with a colonial history. This essay explores some of the difficulties facing the introduction of Creative Writing in the region, namely how it may be perceived as another form of Western cultural imperialism. It proposes a corollary study of transnational writers as a mediating influence and suggests that what Jahan Ramazani calls ‘transnational poetics’ may help resolve the binaries of colonial/postcolonial, east/west, local/global, and uncover new ways of looking at borders for writers/readers in the region.