Pooja Nansi was appointed festival director for the Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) in 2019. During her tenure, Nansi bolstered the outreach to a diverse demographic, which included young people and individuals with special needs. She has enriched the multilingual aspect of the SWF with literary groups dedicated to various mother tongues. When the pandemic hit, Nansi brought the festival to the digital space.

With 2023 being the final year for Nansi as festival director, we conducted an exit interview of sorts about her time at SWF, guilty pleasures and the challenges of parenthood.

(Note: This interview took place last year. Nansi was recently awarded the Knights of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture to celebrate their "significant impact on cultural cooperation" between Singapore and France.)

ESQUIRE SINGAPORE: Was five years always on the plan for you?

POOJA NANSI: I think the typical tenure is four years but with the pandemic and because the festival moved from being housed within National Arts Council to the Art House Limited, I was asked to stay on, just to help stabilise things. That’s why five years. It’s much longer than I expected.

ESQ: What do you feel you have accomplished during your tenure?

PN: I mean, we can only do what we can do with the time that we have. There’s always more to do, right? I had two big goals I needed to see fulfilled because I knew this tenure was always limited. I wanted to increase the space to include a variety of participants and audiences. And to draw in young people who never came to the festival before. So I definitely think we have achieved that to the best of our capacity. If you ask me, there’s always more that can be done. But I am proud of what we’ve achieved in five years.

ESQ: What was the pandemic like for you?

PN: Can we not talk about the pandemic years? [laughs]

ESQ: Was anyone even in the mood for a lit fest?

PN: It was weird because there was very little time to be reflective, right? In the early days of the pandemic, we all thought that this was happening somewhere else. No one imagined that the whole world would shut down. Sometime in April, the decision was made to go digital. And I remembered the team and I going like, we have no idea what that means. A festival is a gathering of people, right? It’s a physical gathering of bodies. So, at the time, we were thrown in the deep end and there was a steep learning curve to overcome.

Whether everyone was in the mood is a good question. But I think it was sorely needed. Props to the Arts Council for realising that because people needed to hold on to something right and writers and thinkers of our time are what people would return to when things get difficult. People needed to connect with other people and the festival provided a space for that. It turned out to be quite a necessary space.

ESQ: Esquire used to work with Yong Shu Hoong and he’s the next director for SWF. Were you involved in the selection process?

PN: I’m not actually involved in the appointment so I can’t speak to that. That’s all done by Arts House Limited and the National Arts Council.

ESQ: Any advice for him?

PN: I’ve known Shu Hoong for a long time because we are both poets in the scene. And, of course, I’ve been to many of his SUBtext sessions as a young poet, he’s always been very generous to me. I don’t believe in giving advice. I think Shu Hoong is more than equipped to take this on and he’s going to give it his own stamp. So it’s not so much advice but I hope he enjoys his time as much as I did.

ESQ: So what will you do now?

PN: I’ve been working on my PhD, which had been on hold for a long time owing to the pandemic. And I had a baby two weeks before the festival during the pandemic. So that was an... interesting year... working everything out. I’m taking a bit of a break from that. So my immediate goal is to focus on the PhD and complete it.

And I would like to return to my writing. I really missed that and then going back to some level of teaching creative writing. I wanna spend time with my daughter and learn to perfect making my mother’s dal. Y’know, things that I haven’t had time to do before.

ESQ: Does having a kid change you as a person; as a writer? I have a child and now, at the movies, I can't bear to watch scenes of children getting hurt.

PN: Yeah, it's a biological thing.

ESQ: Yeah. Because we're hotwired now to protect our young, right?

PN: How old is your child?

ESQ: Four in two months.

PN: My daughter just turned three. So, how has she impacted me? Thanks for asking that. People always ask how being your mother made it more difficult, which carries a lot of presumptions. I'll be really honest, I had a lot of anxiety when I found out that I was pregnant. I was really concerned about how having a child would affect my ability and my freedom to work as a writer and a thinker. But I can honestly say it's just expanded me as a human being beyond my wildest imagining. The clichés are true. Being a parent is the hardest and best job in the world. Your capacity to love expands, your empathy swells. You've become invested in a world that your kid is gonna grow up in.

ESQ: Do you think that has something to do with your openness to provide a space for a younger crowd?

PN: I conceptualised the youth fringe in 2019 before I had my daughter. I think that comes from just being a teacher at heart. I used to teach full-time for 10 years in MOE. I've worked with teenagers for my whole working life; I love working with young people because they're going to take over the world.

ESQ: Do you feel that the younger crowd aren't given the credit they deserve?

PN: The "younger generation"... that's a huge demographic. Some people have far more resources than others. It's not a monolith of young people that we're talking about. Some young people go to certain kinds of schools or come from certain kinds of families and backgrounds and have a lot of access and exposure to the arts. And then there's an entire demographic that, people seem to think, does not need exposure to the arts. That has always rubbed me the wrong way.

Literature teaches you how to know things. It teaches you how to learn. And I feel that we all deserve to have those tools regardless of where we come from. The art scene is potentially, one of the most democratic spaces we can offer a young person, if we come at it correctly and with the right intentionality.

ESQ: Like the Youth Fringe segment for the Singapore Writer's Fest.

PN: It wasn’t about, oh, let’s have a programme for young people. Very early on, I was very clear with my programming team that we cannot presume what young people want. That happens a lot in schools, where we prescribe to young people what they should be reading, what they should want. But what I wanted to know from young people is, what do you want to see in a literary space? Why aren’t you coming and what would make you attend?

We did a bunch of focus groups where we went into schools and asked young people about what they are reading, what is exciting to you? We collected all those data points and gathered youth curators who suggested programmes for us. The trick with that was to trust them, even though the programmes seemed outlandish.

ESQ: What seemed outlandish at the time?

PN: Wattpad. A lot of us were like, what on earth is Wattpad? But that’s what young people are writing and reading on. Even though we didn’t have any idea what it was, we had to trust that this was what young people were excited about. It was kind of magical because they came in droves. Yesterday, I was at an event and we had to turn people away. I was really upset but the book signing was packed. A stampede of young kids ran down with their little origami hearts to give to the author. I see things like this so it’s absolutely untrue that young people are not excited or that they’re apathetic. It’s just that half of the time, we don’t listen and we don’t meet them at where they are. And by that, I mean the average 14-year-old today won’t pick up Great Expectations. They’re engaging in the digital book space, like Booktalk, BookTube... it’s changing the literary landscape for the better.

ESQ: I heard there was a complaint about the inclusion of AI.

PN: Oh yes. For the Opening Debate. [Editor’s note: The festival kickstarts with an Opening Debate with topics that are tongue-in-cheek. This year’s topic was, “This House Believes AI is the Better Writer”.]

ESQ: I understand that the debate is meant to be facetious but people took it the wrong way.

PN: I dunno if it’s taken the “wrong way”. I think those views are valid. But if I’m understanding you correctly, it was a kind of outrage about the fact that a literary festival would feature ChatGPT, right? Someone wrote that AI is unethical because it mines other people’s labour without compensation. That it’s exploitative and unethical. How can a literary scene for writers give space to ChatGPT?

So we responded that the entire premise of the debate and the concern of the debate is precisely that. And we always believe in letting writers have the last word. So we wanted to let writers speak on it. And the plot twist of the debate was that ChatGPT was operated by a writer. If people had come to the debate, they would have realised that the debate was really funny, really clever and actually really poignant.

To me, AI is inevitable. It’s going to be a part of our future. There is anxiety but I think it was a beautiful thing for us as a community of writers and readers to sit with that anxiety and it was comforting to hear writers say, how can we learn to coexist and still use this technology to make our lives better rather than be controlled by it? That was the entire ensuing conversation.

ESQ: I always look at it as a good jumping point for discussion. Instead of just-

PN: Shutting it down.

ESQ: Precisely. We can talk about it. Maybe set up parameters for the use of AI.

PN: How are we going to collectively as a species navigate issues if we don't allow ourselves to talk about it? Maybe I'm growing old. I think social media is important but I do find a lot of the conversations very oversimplified and binary. Like there's only one right thing to say and a few buzzwords that you need to use and if you don't see it exactly like that, then you're wrong. I think that's damaging. That's why a space like a lit fest is precious because it's one of the few spaces where we can listen to each other talk. I mean, how many spaces do we have that allow that?

ESQ: Speaker's Corner?

PN: Yeah suuure. I'm a fan of talking about it no matter how difficult it is. There's no point in shutting it down.

ESQ: What is your guilty pleasure?

PN: I have none any more because I’ve embraced all my trashy loves. They turned me into who I am today. But... when I was a kid, I used to read Sweet Valley High. Now when I look at it, it’s terrible. Francine Pascal created the series but now it’s produced by a team of ghostwriters. It was so formulaic and bad but I was hooked on it. In retrospect, it taught me so much.

I’ve also watched so much trash reality TV. I just finished the latest season of Selling Sunset. I’m very fascinated by the dynamics of that show and its weird feminism. I could write an entire essay for you about that.

ESQ: Is it your PhD?

PN: PhD is not about Selling Sunset, unfortunately. Yeah.

ESQ: What about music? What’s your guilty pleasure?

PN: Oh, this is a hard one to admit but I still listen to Kanye.

ESQ: Old Kanye?

PN: I listen to a lot of old Kanye because I miss the old Kanye. It troubles me. I didn’t get off the Kanye train for a long time. Even when a lot of people dropped off, I was still kinda hoping that Kanye would say something that would redeem himself, but yeah. It’s really hard to justify it but I believe in listening, reading and watching things in the context. So, I listen to old Kanye and I don’t feel guilty. I feel conflicted about who he’s become and what he’s saying, but old Kanye’s music came from such a pure place actually, like some of those songs are so pure, that sometimes I’d cry listening to “Hey Momma”... they pull at my heartstrings because you can hear his hope, naivety and his emotions.

I can’t listen to Justin Timberlake the same way any more either. Like after all of the things that have come out, you know. It’s really hard to listen to him in the same way as before.

ESQ: Does your daughter know what you do?

PN: She’s very recently figured it out. I told her that, oh, mama runs a festival and she came to the festival this weekend and really enjoyed it. I left her with Denise from Closet Full of Books for about 40 minutes. She reads every book that she comes across. Sometimes when I tell people that my daughter loves books, they’re like, oh, of course she’s your kid but I’ve never met a kid who doesn’t like books. Because children are born curious, right? If you present them with something and you let them explore, that love for it will grow.

ESQ: Can she read?

PN: My daughter loves being read to. Every night is a battle about how many books we're going to read before she sleeps. It's a bit of a negotiation because I have energy for two and then she'll come into the room with four books. If we go to a bookstore and she picks something, I will let her buy it. Even if it has too many words. Maybe she won't understand it but I'll let her buy it because she'll get into it.

ESQ: Do you control what she consumes?

PN: I think, there’s a difference between gently nudging her towards new things and saying no. It’s different for every child and every parent but for me—and I know this is going to be a controversial statement—I’d rather she engages with difficult things with my knowledge. So that we can have that conversation.

I’m not saying it’s easy; it’s really difficult, especially when explaining big concepts to kids. But I’d rather we try and grapple with the issue together. A good example is when she was missing her grandparents one weekend and—she has big feelings—burst into tears. I tried to compromise with her, it’s ok. You know, you are going to see your grandfather and grandma tomorrow. And then she asked me, do you miss your grandmother? It took me aback. I said, yeah, I missed her a lot. And she said, oh, but it’s ok mama because you can see her tomorrow.

That was the moment when I had to make a choice, right? Because the easy answer is to dismiss her and think she won’t know any better. But I said, I can’t see my grandmother tomorrow because she is gone. She’s gone up to the sky to be with God, you know? And my daughter looked terrified but I assured her that it’s not scary. I may miss my grandmother but she’s always in my heart.

ESQ: I had several deaths in the family this year and my kid was asking questions about it. Like you, I came to a crossroads about talking to him about death and dying. I told him that Grandma died and now she's in a better place and I thought that he understood. Then, a few months later, he started saying that he hoped I'd die.

PN: But he's hoping that you'll get to a better place.

ESQ: Yeah. It sounds flippant but, weirdly, it came from a good place. You'd want to protect them from all that.

PN: I did not come to this interview thinking that I was gonna cry with you, but yeah.

ESQ: I'm still not sure if talking about death is too early for him. I do want him to be emotionally secure if either of his parents dies.

PN: There is no correct way to parent. We do the best that we can. And it's not the exact quote but I go back to Philip Larkin-

ESQ: "This Be The Verse".

PN: Yeah, we're gonna do it. But we try our best not to.

ESQ: Speaking about death, can we talk about Adrian Tan? He sadly passed and this is the first year you’re doing the debate without him.

PN: For the festival’s Opening Debate, yes. It’s really one of those things that hit me harder than I thought. The reason for that is that I’ve never seen Adrian without a smile on his face. He has always been so kind, so supportive, so generous with his time and his energy.

Ever since I took over the festival and when I doubt myself for a decision that I’ve made, Adrian would be like, if people are a bit pissed off, you’re doing it right. And, this is kind of morbid but, he added, don’t worry, Pooja. No one’s gonna die. That’s Adrian. He never takes anything too seriously.

ESQ: Did you know about his illness?

PN: I knew he had been ill for a while but in true Adrian fashion, he never called attention to it. He never made anything about himself. I might get the timeline wrong but I think as early as February or March, when we had an online meeting, I saw him and I didn’t think he looked too well. But I wasn’t expecting that he would go so soon. That was hard.

We talked about how we wanted to celebrate him at the festival... and I intentionally used the word “celebrate” and not “memorialise him” or “eulogise him”; that’s just not in the spirit of who Adrian was. He always enlivened the party. We didn’t want to do a moment of silence because Adrian would have hated that. So, we decided to dedicate the debate to his memory.

ESQ: Given what you know, if you were asked to return to lead the Singapore Writers Fest’s programme, would you?

PN: Not immediately, I would like a little time away from it. I haven’t had time to reflect on what we’ve achieved and where it’s moved to. Some distance is important for reflection, right? But if I have the chance to work with these people again, I’d do it in a heartbeat. It’s been a privilege of a lifetime to work with these people.

ESQ: Are we good? Is there anything else you want to talk about?

PN: No man. We already talked about kids and death and Kanye. I think we’re good. 

Photography: Shawn Paul Tan
Styling: Asri Jasman
Photography Assistant: Xie Feng Mao
Hair and Makeup: Nicole Ang at THE SUBURBS STUDIO using DUNGÜD and DIOR BEAUTY