It is 8am on the last morning of the Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) in 2023 and Pooja Nansi is standing on the front lawn outside Arts House. No festivalgoers have arrived yet, so Nansi enjoys a rare moment of quiet, watching the coffee and bookstore vendors set up.
Beside her is Alex Lee, an events director Nansi worked alongside for the festival—whom she describes as “always having gone above and beyond”. Lee eventually breaks the silence: “I'm going to miss working with you so much, Pooja.”
According to Nansi, this is the first time she has cried on festival grounds. This is hard for me to believe. Nansi is someone who operates on feelings. Big feelings, in fact, which seem to be her medium of choice even more so than words.
“I recall, at three or four years old, experiencing intense grief because my mother was getting rid of the dining table we'd had for a few years. I thought,
