Visiting Writers

Zen Cho

Zen Cho writes fantasy and romance. Her newest novel, The Friend Zone Experiment, is a contemporary romance set among London’s East and Southeast Asian community. Zen is a winner of the Hugo, Crawford and British Fantasy Awards and the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize, as well as a finalist for the World Fantasy, Ignyte, Lambda, Locus and Astounding Awards. She was born and raised in Malaysia, resides in the UK, and lives in a notional space between the two.

Zen Cho will be a Visiting Writer from 1 March to 31 March 2024.

Intan Paramaditha

Intan Paramaditha is an Indonesian author based in Australia. Her novel The Wandering, translated from the Indonesian language by Stephen J. Epstein, was nominated for the Stella Prize in Australia and awarded the Tempo Best Literary Fiction in Indonesia, English PEN Translates Award, and PEN/ Heim Translation Fund Grant from PEN America. She is the author of the short story collection Apple and Knife and the editor of Deviant Disciples: Indonesian Women Poets, part of the Translating Feminisms series of Tilted Axis Press. Her essay, “On the Complicated Questions Around Writing About Travel,” was selected for The Best American Travel Writing 2021. Her new novel Malam Seribu Jahanam was recently published in Indonesia. She holds a Ph.D. from New York University and teaches media and film studies at Macquarie University, Sydney. 

Intan Paramaditha will be a Visiting Writer from 1 November to 30 December 2023.

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson CBE is a British writer. After graduating from Oxford University, she published her first novel at 25 and has written thirteen novels for adults, two collections of short stories, as well as children’s books, non-fiction and screenplays. Night Side of the River is her latest book.

Jeanette Winterson will be a Visiting Writer from 18 November to 24 November 2023.

Suneel Krishnan

Dr Suneel Krishnan is an esteemed writer, translator, critic, essayist and editor of Tamil language fiction who has presented at workshops and festivals in India, Malaysia and Singapore. He has written short stories and novels including Ambu Padukkai (2018), Vishakkinaru (2020) and Neelakantam (2020).  Among the awards and recognition he has received include the 2018 Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar award for his short story collection ‘Ambu Padukkai’, the 2018 Kanaiyazhi Ezhuthu Kuru novel competition ‘Asokamithran’ prize for his novella ‘Pesum Poonai’, the Ka Na Su short story award for ‘Eppodhum Mudivele Inbam’ in 2020 and the “அறச்செம்மல்” award given by Erode Aram Arakatalai.

மதிப்புக்குரிய எழுத்தாளர், மொழிபெயர்ப்பாளர், விமர்சகர், கட்டுரையாளர் மற்றும் தமிழ் மொழி புனைகதைகளின் பதிப்பாசிரியராகிய டாக்டர் சுனில் கிருஷ்ணன்,  இந்தியா, மலேசியா மற்றும் சிங்கப்பூரில் பயிலரங்குகளிலும் விழாக்களிலும் படைத்துள்ளார்.  ‘அம்புப்படுக்கை’ (2018), ‘விஷக் கிணறு’ (2020) மற்றும் “நீலகண்டம்’ (2020) இவர் எழுதிய சிறுகதைகள் மற்றும் நாவல்களில் அடங்கும்.  இவருக்கு கிடைத்த விருதுகள் மற்றும் அங்கீகாரங்களில் ‘அம்புப்படுக்கை’ சிறுகதை தொகுப்பிற்கு வழங்கப்பட்ட 2018 ஆம் ஆண்டு சாகித்திய அகாதமி யுவ புராஸ்கார் விருது, ‘பேசும் பூனை’ குறுநாவலுக்கு கொடுக்கப்பட்ட 2018 ஆம் ஆண்டு கணையாழி எழுத்து குறுநாவல் போட்டி அசோகமித்திரன் பரிசு, ‘எப்போதும் முடிவிலே இன்பம்’ சிறுகதைக்கு 2020 இல் வழங்கப்பட்ட க.நா.சு சிறுகதைப் பரிசு, ஈரோடு அறம் அறக்கட்டளை வழங்கிய அறச்செம்மல் விருது போன்றவை அடங்கும்.

Suneel Krishnan will be a Visiting Writer from 11 September to 1 December 2023.

HuaiChen Wu

Wu Huaichen is a poet from Taiwan. He has published multiple literary works, including the poetry book “Gulps of the Pouring Light ” (winner of the Golden Tripod Awards for Excellent Literary Book), “Surfer Romance” (winner of the Wu Zhuoliu Literary Prize‧ Poetry Award ), and the prose “Songs of a Surfer” (winner of China Times Open Book Award, the Best Book of the Year), etc. In addition, he has published several academic collections of research essays on literature and philosophy, and he is also the translator of several important academic books, including Georges Bataille’s “Tears of Eros” in Chinese. As a professor of the Graduate Institute of Transdisciplinary Study on Creative Writing and Literature, Wu has advised many talented young writers. As a poet, he has been invited to participate in numerous international poetry festivals such as the Asian International Poetry Festival, the Taipei International Poetry Festival, the Pacific International Poetry Festival, and the Singapore Writers Festival.

吴怀晨，台湾诗人，任教于台北艺术大学文学跨领域创作所，近年专注书写台湾的山海文学。他的学术专长包括比较哲学、现当代华文文学、及新诗写作，曾任美国德州大学奥斯丁分校访问学者（2022-23）。出版诗集《渴饮光流》(获金鼎奖）、《浪人吟》(获吴浊流文学奖新诗奖）及散文集《浪人之歌》(获开卷年度好书奖）等，并有学术著作及译作多种。

HuaiChen Wu will be a Visiting Writer from 7 August to 1 December 2023.

Mawar Safei

Dr Mawar Safei merupakan penulis fiksyen bahasa Melayu yang terunggul dengan reputasi bertaraf dunia sebagai seorang cendekiawan dan pendidik Melayu. Beliau telah menerbitkan penulisan akademiknya dalam beberapa jurnal dan majalah. Beliau juga pernah menghasilkan kumpulan-kumpulan cerpen termasuk Narasi Musim Wabah: Antologi Cerpen Covid (Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2021). Selaku penulis ruang dalam Dewan Siswa, beliau mengulas karya-karya penulis Melayu muda dan juga telah menerbit dalam Himpunan dan Ulasan Cerpen (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 2021). Antara anugerah dan pengiktirafan yang telah beliau terima termasuk, buat beberapa tahun, Hadiah Sastera Utusan Melayu-Public Bank, Hadiah Sastera Utusan Group-Exxon Mobil, Hadiah Sastera Perdana Malaysia dan Hadiah Sastera Darul Takzim. Beliau juga penerima Anugerah Akademik Negara (Seni dan Kreativiti) 2018 dan Anugerah SEA Write 2018. Kini, beliau seorang Profesor Madya serta Ketua Kluster Warisan Melayu (2020-2022) di Pusat Bitara Melayu, Fakulti Sains Sosial dan Kemanusiaan, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Sebagai pakar dalam kesusasteraan bandingan dan kreativiti, beliau berjaya menamatkan Doktor Falsafah (Kesusasteraan Bandingan) di Universiti Teknologi Nanyang dan Sarjana Sastera di Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

Dr Mawar Safei is an esteemed writer of Malay language fiction with a world class reputation as a Malay scholar and educator. She has published her academic writing in numerous journals and magazines. She has also written short story collections including Narasi Musim Wabah: Antologi Cerpen Covid (Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2021). Among the awards and recognition she has received include, in multiple years, the Utusan Melayu-Public Bank Literary Prize, the Utusan Group-Exxon Mobil Literary Prize, the Perdana Malaysia Literary Prize and the Darul Takzim Literary Prize. She is the recipient of the 2018 National Academic Award (Art and Creativity) and SEA Write Award 2018. She is currently an Associate Professor and Head of the Malay Heritage Cluster (2020-2022) at the Malay Excellence Center, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. 

Mawar Safei will be a Visiting Writer from 7 August to 27 October 2023.

Chen Chen

Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. His work appears in many publications, including Poetry and three editions of The Best American Poetry. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists. He was the 2018-2022 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University and currently teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast. He lives with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug, Mr. Rupert Giles. 

Chen Chen will be a Visiting Writer from 17 June to 22 July 2023 (online).

Claire Keegan

Claire Keegan was raised on a farm on the Wicklow/Wexford border. Her works have won numerous awards and are translated into more than thirty languages. Antarctica won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Walk the Blue Fields won the Edge Hill Prize for the finest collection of stories published in the British Isles. Foster, after winning the Davy Byrnes Award — then the world’s richest prize for a story — was chosen by The Times as one of the top 50 works to be published in the 21st Century. It is now part of the school syllabus in Ireland. Her latest, Small Things Like These, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize. It won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the Ambassadors’ Prize for best Irish novel published in France, and The Kerry Prize for Irish Novel of the year. It is now nominated for the Dublin Literary Award, the world’s richest literary prize, which is presented annually for the best novel in the world written or translated into English. 

Claire Keegan will be a Visiting Writer from 1 April to 22 May 2023.

J.C. Hallman

J.C. Hallman grew up in Southern California. He studied creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh, the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Hallman’s nonfiction combines memoir, history, journalism, and travelogue. His first book, The Chess Artist, tells the story of Hallman’s friendship with chess player Glenn Umstead. His second, The Devil is a Gentleman, is an intellectual apprenticeship with philosopher William James. In Utopia explores the history of utopian literature in the context of visits to six modern utopias in various stages of realization. Wm & H’ry examines the copious correspondence of William and Henry James. B & Me is an account of Hallman’s literary relationship with Nicholson Baker. Hallman’s latest, Say Anarcha, tells the harrowing story of the birth of modern women’s heath, and will appear from Henry Holt in June 2023.

Hallman has also published a book of short stories, The Hospital for Bad Poets, and edited two anthologies of “creative criticism,” The Story About the Story and The Story About the Story II.

Among other honors, Hallman was a recipient of a 2010 McKnight Artist Fellowship in fiction, and a 2013 Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in the general non-fiction category.

J.C. Hallman will be a Visiting Writer from 4 February to 25 February 2023 (online).

Alice Pung

Alice Pung OAM is an award-winning Australian writer, editor and lawyer. Her books include the bestselling memoirs Unpolished Gem (2006) and Her Father’s Daughter (2011), and the novel Laurinda (2014). She is the editor of the anthology Growing Up Asian in Australia (2008), and created the Marly books for Penguin’s Our Australian Girl series (2015). Her latest book is the novel One Hundred Days (2021), shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. She is a graduate of the Iowa International Writing Program, and has guest-lectured at Vassar College, Brown University, the University of Milan and the University of Bologna, as well as Peking University. She is the current Artist-in-Residence at Janet Clarke Hall, the University of Melbourne. In 2022, she was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for her services to Literature.

Alice Pung will be a Visiting Writer from 9 January to 30 January 2023 (online).

Akhil Sharma

Akhil Sharma was born in Delhi in India and emigrated to the USA in 1979. His stories have been published in the New Yorker and in Atlantic Monthly, and have been included in The Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Collections. His first novel, An Obedient Father, won the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. He was named one of Granta’s ‘Best of Young American Novelists’ in 2007. His second novel, Family Life, won The 2015 Folio Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award 2016. Sharma is currently a Fellow at The New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

Akhil Sharma will be a Visiting Writer from 18 September to 23 October 2021 (online) and from 8 August to 2 December 2022 (in Singapore).

Khor Ewe Pin

1955年生，马来西亚吉打人。大学时代修习动物学系，后进修教育硕士学位。曾任教师、编辑、课本编者、专栏作家。2006年开始创作少年长篇小说、绘图小说等，著有超过40部作品。2010年起，陆续将34部作品授权中国青岛出版社和浙江少年儿童出版社在中国出版简体中文版，并在中国完成超过1000场校园讲座活动。少年长篇小说《七天》《闪亮的时刻》《十月》《鹅卵石》《青色的围墙》被改编成电视剧。曾获马来西亚第四届乡青中篇小说奖第一名、第一届马汉儿童文学双年奖，2020年因推广儿童文学的贡献，获颁第六届南洋华文文学奖。2021年，因居家防疫，学用电脑绘图，出版第一本原创儿童绘本《呼哈！呼哈！》，完成当画家的夙愿。

Khor Ewe Pin was born in the state of Kedah, Malaysia in the year 1955. A former teacher, he obtained his first degree in Zoology (University of Malaya), after which he pursued a postgraduate Masters in Education. He had also worked as an editor (both textbooks and others) and was a feature writer too. He started writing teenage novels in 2006. He sold the publication rights of 34 titles to Qingdao Publishing Group and Zhejiang Juvenile and Children’s Publishing House in The People’s Republic of China, to publish his books in simplified Chinese since 2010. He won the first prize in the 4th Xiang Qing Novella Writing Competition, and also came out tops to win the 1st Mahan Literary Award. In year 2020, he won the 6th Nanyang Chinese Literature Award. In year 2021, as a result of home quarantine pandemic prevention, he came to be acquainted with digital illustration. The publication of his first picture book Huha! Huha! serves to fulfill his long-standing wish to become an artist.

Khor Ewe Pin will be a Visiting Writer from 9 October to 30 October 2021 (online) and from 8 August to 2 December 2022 (in Singapore).

A.L. Kennedy

A.L. Kennedy was born in Dundee. She lived for almost 30 years in Glasgow and now stays in North Essex. She has won a variety of UK and international book awards, including a Lannan Award, the Costa Prize, The Heinrich Heine Preis, the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rees Prize. She has twice been included on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. She has written 9 novels, 6 short story collections, 3 books of non-fiction and 3 books for children. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Akademie der Kunst. She also writes for the stage, screen, TV and has created an extensive body of radio work including documentaries, monologues, dramas and essays. She also performs occasionally in one person shows and as a stand up comic.

A.L. Kennedy will be a Visiting Writer from 3 September to 8 October 2022 (online).

Mary Jean Chan

Mary Jean Chan (b. 1990) is the author of Flèche, published by Faber & Faber (2019) and Faber USA (2020). Flèche won the 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry and was named as a Book of the Year in The Guardian, The Irish Times and The White Review. In 2020, Flèche was shortlisted for multiple literary prizes, including the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize. In 2021, Flèche was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. In 2018, Chan was selected as the winner of the UK’s Poetry Society Geoffrey Dearmer Prize. They were shortlisted for the Forward Prizes in the Best Single Poem category in 2017 and 2019, and received an Eric Gregory Award in 2019 for a collection by a poet under the age of 30, awarded by the Society of Authors. Their reviews have appeared in The Guardian Review, with literary criticism published in The Journal of American Studies and The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry. In Spring 2020, Chan served as guest co-editor with Will Harris at The Poetry Review. Their second poetry collection, Bright Fear, is forthcoming from Faber in 2023. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Chan is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Oxford Brookes University and serves as a supervisor on the MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. 

Mary Jean Chan will be a Visiting Writer from 16 October to 6 November 2021 (online) and from 4 July to 26 August 2022 (in Singapore).

Sharlene Teo

Sharlene Teo’s debut novel Ponti was published by Picador and Simon and Schuster in 2018. Her work has been translated into eleven languages and featured in places such as the Guardian, the TLS, LitHub, Granta and Vogue. She completed an MA in Prose Fiction and a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. She lectures at the University of Kent and lives in London.

Sharlene Teo will be a Visiting Writer from 4 September to 2 October 2021 (online) and from 27 June to 15 Aug 2022 (in Singapore).

Jing-Jing Lee

Born and raised in Singapore, Jing-Jing Lee’s first novel, How We Disappeared, was published by Oneworld in 2019. It has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Singapore Literature Prize and the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown. She has a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford and currently lives in Amsterdam with her husband and son.

Jing-Jing Lee will be a Visiting Writer from 20 March to 8 May 2021 (online) and 27 June to 29 July 2022 (in Singapore).

Perundevi Srinivasan

Perundevi has published eight anthologies of poetry and an anthology of microfiction over the past two decades. She is deeply engaged with contemporary Tamil society and culture and a regular contributor of poems, translations and articles to Tamil literary magazines and journals. She has published a volume of essays on sexual violence as a social practice engaging with Tamil literary texts and violence against women. She has also edited a volume of critical essays on the works of the Tamil modernist writer Asokamittiran. An academic by profession, Perundevi has a Ph.D in interdisciplinary human sciences from George Washington University. She is currently an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Siena College. Her research interests include popular religious practices engaging with colonial and post-colonial modernity in southern India, global feminisms, and Tamil literature and cinema.

Perundevi Srinivasan will be a Visiting Writer from 15 May to 1 August 2022.

Dr Feng-en Tu

現任聯經出版總編輯，故事StoryStudio執行長。畢業於臺灣大學歷史系、歷史研究所，曾任職於臺灣大學數位人文中心（原數位典藏中心），後赴美國哈佛大學東亞系取得博士學位，並於哈佛燕京圖書館擔任博士後研究員。在博士班期間，曾擔任北美臺灣研究學會會長，並與友人共創網路媒體「故事 StoryStudio」。 出版有《救命：明清中國的醫生與病人》、《大人的日本史》等書。

Dr Feng-en Tu is currently the editor-in-chief at the Linking Publishing Company and CEO at StoryStudio.tw, an online media that focuses on cultural and literary issues. He earned his B.A. and M.A. at National Taiwan University and his Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University. He was a member of the Research Center for Digital Humanities at National Taiwan University and the Research Lab for East Asian Digital Scholarship of the Harvard-Yenching Library. 

Dr Feng-en Tu will be a Visiting Writer from 18 June to 26 June 2022 (online).

Aliette de Bodard

Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris. She has won three Nebula Awards, an Ignyte Award, a Locus Award, a British Fantasy Award and four British Science Fiction Association Awards. She was a double Hugo finalist for 2019 (Best Series and Best Novella). Her most recent book is Fireheart Tiger (Tor.com), a sapphic romantic fantasy inspired by pre colonial Vietnam, where a diplomat princess must decide the fate of her country, and her own. She also wrote Seven of Infinities (Subterranean Press), a space opera where a sentient spaceship and an upright scholar join forces to investigate a murder, and find themselves falling for each other. Other books include Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders, (JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.), a fantasy of manners and murders set in an alternate 19th Century Vietnamese court. Her space opera books include The Tea Master and the Detective (2018 Nebula Award winner, 2018 British Fantasy Award winner, 2019 Hugo Award finalist). Her short story collection Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight is out from Subterranean Press.

Aliette de Bodard will be a Visiting Writer from 7 May to 25 May 2022 (online).

Rob Doyle

Rob Doyle’s third book, THRESHOLD, was published by Bloomsbury in 2020, and was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. Doyle’s debut novel, HERE ARE THE YOUNG MEN, was published in 2014 by Bloomsbury and the Lilliput Press. It was selected as one of Hot Press magazine’s ‘20 Greatest Irish Novels 1916-2016’, and has been made into a film starring Dean Charles Chapman and Anya Taylor Joy. THIS IS THE RITUAL, a collection of short stories, was published in 2016 to widespread acclaim. Rob Doyle is the editor of the anthology THE OTHER IRISH TRADITION (Dalkey Archive Press), and IN THIS SKULL HOTEL WHERE I NEVER SLEEP (Broken Dimanche Press). He has written for the New York Times, TLS, Vice, Sunday Times, Dublin Review, Observer and many other publications, and throughout 2019 he wrote a weekly column on cult books for the Irish Times. His next book, Autobibliography, will be published later in 2021.

Rob Doyle will be a Visiting Writer from 10 January to 13 May 2022.

Deborah Smith

Deborah Smith was born in 1987 in a small town in South Yorkshire, England. She began learning Korean in 2010, and became a literary translator specialising in contemporary Korean fiction. Her translations include three books by Han Kang – The Vegetarian, Human Acts and The White Book – and four by Bae Suah, most recently Untold Night and Day. 

In 2015 Deborah founded Tilted Axis, a non-profit press focusing on translations from Asian languages: Turkish, Uzbek, Bangla, Nepali, Tamil, Kannada, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Cebuano, and Hindi. Upcoming books include translations from Arabic (Yemen) and Telugu, as well as anthologies of Queer Poetry from South Asia and mixed-genre pieces on Decolonising Translation.

These days she is taking time out to think about supporting translation as an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist practice. She translates little and slowly, mainly poetry, and her other translation work involves mentoring, learning to live in India, and engaging with Tibetan Buddhism.

Deborah Smith will be a Visiting Writer from 10 October to 31 October 2021 (online).

Liang Wern Fook

One of the most influential artists born around the independence of Singapore, Dr. Liang is a multi-talented writer, composer, and educator. He is the Language Director of Xue Er You Language Centre. Voted as the “The person who best represent the Xinyao movement” by the public and “The most favorite writer” by students, Dr Liang is the only artist who has received the Young Artist Award (Literature) and The Cultural Medallion (Music) across different genres of art. Dr. Liang has over fifteen publications in various genres of creative writing, and has about three hundred songs to his name. Many of his musical works became international hit songs. He works were described as “bridging literature and music in the art scene of Singapore”.

梁文福博士

新加坡家喻户晓的写作人、音乐人、学而优语文中心语文总监。曾获选“最能代表新谣精神的人物”和“最受学生喜爱的作家”，迄今唯一跨艺术门类荣获“青年艺术奖”（文学）和“文化奖”（音乐）的艺术家。已出版各种文类著作十余种，发表歌曲近三百首，作品在华人世界广传，被誉为“文学和音乐之间的桥梁”。

Liang Wern Fook will be a Visiting Writer from 11 January to 14 May 2021.