THE PEOPLE ELSEWHERE

Unbound Journeys with the Storytellers of Myanmar.

Lucas Stewart explores the contemporary landscape of literature in Myanmar, engaging and working with censored and jailed writers, publishers and booksellers. His travels took him to the ethnic states of Burma which, little known to outsiders and even the urban Burmese, harbour a cultural and artistic legacy where literature is a means of identification, and of separation from each other and from the cities.

The People Elsewhere book narrates more than one story. It is a journey through the writers on the periphery of a country undergoing a transformation many thought would never come. It tells of a country where the ‘now’ is intertwined with the ‘before’, where history, and the lessons learnt from it, cannot be so easily set aside in the face of development. To quote Burmese writer and Stewart’s friend Sayar Lay Ko Tin, The People Elsewhere is ‘about the writers in Yangon and all the people elsewhere in Burma.’

Lucas Stewart is the British Council’s Country Literature Advisor for Myanmar. After living in the Middle East and Asia for eleven years, he moved to Myanmar in early 2011 and witnessed firsthand the transition of a country from military dictatorship to fledgling democracy. In this time, he has been working with the Myanmar literary community. He has written articles on literature and ethnic minority groups in Myanmar for English PEN’s Atlas journal, Swedish PEN’s Dissident blog, Arts Professional, The Diplomat and other publications.