Diary of One Who Disappeared E-book Available for Preorder

The book launch for Diary of One Who Disappeared is fast approaching, so mark your calendars! All of Singapore is invited!

1. What: Launch of Diary of One Who Disappeared
2. Where: Books Kinokuniya main store (Orchard Road), Takashimaya SC
3. When: 6 April 2019, 2-3pm
4. Why: To listen to a discussion of adaptation, superpowers, politics and parallel universes
5. How: Moderated by Cyril Wong

It’s important to have a big showing at the launch, in order to boost sales for the first week, and to encourage Kino to stock the book well. And I’d love for y’all to be there to help me celebrate a work that took five and a half years from conception to publication.

ALSØ, the e-book edition of the novella is now available for preorder (yay!) at the following places:

• Google Play
• Barnes & Noble
• Apple iTunes
• Amazon [ USA • UK • Germany ]
• Kobo (forthcoming)
• Scribd (forthcoming)
• Playster (forthcoming)
• 24Symbols (forthcoming)

ALSØ ALSØ, the print edition is available for purchase RIGHT NOW at these places:

• Books Kinokuniya
• Epigram Books
• Local Books
• Huggs-Epigram Coffee Bookshop

Exciting times! WØØT!

Event Schedule: Diary of One Who Disappeared

Diary of One Who Disappeared is now back from the printers, and I’ve gotten my author copies (check out my Facebook page for the unboxing), yay! The paperback will be available in fine Singaporean bookshops by start of April (and, as you can see from the photo, it’s actually already for sale at the new Huggs-Epigram Coffee Bookshop), and the ebook will be available on all major platforms as well (more on this later).

So, now that the novella exists (plusyay!), it’s time to post my upcoming event schedule in support of the book’s release. If you’ll be in Singapore for the month of April, or in Penang during Star Wars Day, please come on down to the below events to help me celebrate!

2 April, 640-700pm
Radio Interview
Money FM 89.3: The Curve with Michelle Martin & Bernard Lim

Michelle had me on her show last year to talk about LONTAR issue 10, and then graciously agreed to moderate a LONTAR retrospective panel at the 2018 Singapore Writers Festival, so I’m very excited to talk with her again, this time about my own fiction.

6 April, 200-300pm
Official Book Launch
with Cyril Wong (mod)
Books Kinokuniya Neo SIMS (Orchard Road)

This will be the official launch for the book, so if you can come to any event, come to this one. Sales for this weekend are very important, and can determine whether the novella makes Kino’s bestseller list, not to mention national bestseller lists (for which I can only hope). A big jump-start at the beginning can also result in healthy regular sales months and years afterward. Kino has been a wonderful partner with Epigram Books, and I’m very grateful that they’re allowing us the space to launch the book there.

22–23 April, 1030am–530pm
Artist-in-Attendence
Huggs-Epigram Coffee Bookshop (URA Centre)

If you’ve read Singaporean news lately, you know that the Huggs-Epigram Coffee Bookshop (a collaboration between Epigram and Huggs Coffee) has just opened its doors, the only bookstore in the country right now selling books that exclusively focus on Singapore and Singaporean writers. As a continued part of that grand opening, the Artist-in-Attendence programme has been established to give Singaporean writers and artists an exclusive table to work on their art. “If you’ve always wanted to know how authors work or gain inspiration, or simply wanted to thank your favourite author—here’s your chance. Don’t be shy, come and say hi.” Also, the coffee is pretty damn tasty.

4 May, 400-600pm
Bookstore Event
Gerakbudaya Bookshop @ Hikayat (Beach Street)
George Town, Penang, Malaysia

Since my first invitation to the George Town Literary Festival in 2016, I have been welcomed by Gerakbudaya’s director Gareth Richards and his wonderful staff, and made to feel seen. So I was especially excited when they agreed to bring me in to their sister store, Hikayat, to launch the book in Penang. As I mentioned above, the event will take place the day before Ramadan starts, i.e. Star Wars Day (May the 4th…), so expect me in my Empire Strikes Back shirt.

Thanks in advance for showing up and allowing my fiction some space in your life (doubleplusyay!).

If you’re unable to attend either the Kinokuniya or Gerakbudaya launches, you can still order the book from either store, or direct from Epigram Books or Local Books; be sure to indicate whether you would like a signed copy.

Now Available for Preorder: My New Novella!

Last month on social media, I shared the cover art for my brand new novella, Diary of One Who Disappeared (being released in April 2019), and now the book is available for preorder from Epigram Books!

I’m so excited that this slim book will finally be seeing the light of day, and I can’t wait for y’all to read it. I’m a bit burned out on doorstoppers at the moment, so in case you’re the same, this is perfect for you, a compelling story that can be (conceivably) finished in one sitting.

If you are a book reviewer for a legitimate venue, email me so we can get a review copy to you straight away (most likely PDF, but we might be printing some ARCs for local reviewers).

We’ve gotten some lovely praise quotes in already (and are expecting even more):

“A fantastic tale of the possibility of revolution—both personal and political—inherent in every moment.”
—Ken Liu, multi-award-winning author of The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

“Through communiqués, missives and the common email, relationships unfold and splinter within a futuristic world ruled by religiosity and prejudice, mirroring our present-day political climate in terrifying but revelatory ways. Diary of One Who Disappeared also convincingly offers a morality tale about how the ramifications of our actions and thoughts, even our unconscious desires, extend beyond the realm of our known universe.”
—Cyril Wong, Singapore Literature Prize-winning author of Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me

“A story of interpersonal and international politics, a haunting exploration of how one defines and redefines oneself, a thriller and a human tale of personal growth. If you are looking for intelligent, thought-provoking speculative fiction, board the airship from the repressive North American Union to cosmopolitan Tinhau. Readers of thoughtful, humane fiction are in for a treat.”
—John Kessel, Nebula Award-winning author of The Moon and the Other

I’ll be presenting the novella this coming Friday at the Epigram Books biannual sales conference (which this year we’re calling First Look Showcase: Stories About Stories) for industry professionals. If they like what I have to say, there’s a good chance that they’ll order bunches of copies for their bookshops, or devote some page space in newspapers and magazines. Wish me luck!

And also go preorder the book! 😀

My SWF 2018 Author Schedule

In just a few weeks, the festivities for the 2018 Singapore Writers Festival will kick off, and I’m happy to have been invited as a featured author once again (this will make the seventh year in a row). I’ll be around for much of the festival, but here are the events that I’m directly involved with.

1. Panel: Achieving Utopia
with Patrick Williams (mod), Thea Lim and Rachel Heng
The Arts House, Gallery II, 02 Nov, 800-900pm

2. Launch: Short Stories About Home (moderator)
Lion City by Ng Yi-Sheng & Marriage and Mutton Curry by Dato’ M. Shanmughalingam
The Arts House, Gallery II, 03 Nov, 130-230pm

3. Reading: Alluvium: The Journal of Literary Shanghai
with Tina Kanagaratnam (mod), Chua Chee Lay, Daryl Lim, Xiangyun Lim, Lynette Tan, Tse Hao Guang and Cyril Wong
The Arts House, Gallery II, 05 Nov, 730-900pm

4. Panel: LONTAR Retrospective
with Michelle Martin (mod), Victor Fernando R. Ocampo and Christina Sng
The Arts House, Festival Bookstore, 08 Nov, 730-830pm

5. Panel: The Uncanny (moderator)
with Han Yujoo, Intan Paramaditha and Jon Gresham
The Arts House, Blue Room, 10 Nov, 200-300pm

My author page is incomplete, and the LONTAR event will not be on the programme (since it’s being organised by BooksActually for the festival bookstore), so please refer to this page for the most complete information.

So yeah, I’m going to be pretty busy with my own events, and I’m super excited to attend David Sedaris’ SWF lecture, “Love, Death and Family Life: Postcards from David Sedaris,” and I’ll be taking Anya to some of the SWF3 (SWF For Families) events, but do please say hello if you see me (likely looking a bit dazed).

Introducing BNSSSv4 Guest Editor Pooja Nansi!

Pooja Nansi and Jason Erik Lundberg, guest editor and series editor of
Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Four.
Photo copyright © 2015 by Jason Erik Lundberg.

The contract has been signed, and so I am elated to announce that Pooja Nansi will be the guest editor of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Four! Yay, w00t and huzzah!

I’ve long wanted to work with Pooja on a project, and I’m so delighted that she’s agreed to curate our fourth volume of BNSSS (to be released by Epigram Books in October 2019). I’m a great admirer of her poetry and performance (Love is an Empty Barstool is one of my all-time favourite Singaporean poetry collections), her commitment as an educator (both as a teacher and as Singapore’s first Youth Poet Ambassador), and her eagerness to pay it forward by spearheading the incredible spoken word / reading series Speakeasy. And though she’s known primarily as a Young Artist Award-winning poet, she has a finely discerning eye for prose as well, and I can’t wait to see what stories she selects for the anthology.

As before, we are only considering previously published short stories by Singaporean writers. We will be already looking at notable lit journals as well anthologies and single-author collections by major Singaporean publishers. However, if you would like to recommend a published short story under 10,000 words, you can shoot me an email, and I’ll pass it along.

Two New Books Coming Out in 2019

The contracts have at last been signed, so I can officially announce that Epigram Books will be publishing two books by me next year, scheduled for March and October, respectively: a novella called The Diary of One Who Disappeared (recipient of the 2013 NAC Creation Grant), and a “greatest hits” short story collection called Most Excellent and Lamentable (with an introduction by Dean Francis Alfar). Yay!

I’ve resisted submitting my own fiction to Epigram Books for a long time, because it felt a bit strange publishing fiction at the company where I’m the fiction editor. But I’m glad that it’ll be happening, and that I’ll be working with my colleague Eldes Tran to shape both of these manuscripts.

This all came about when I proposed reprinting Red Dot Irreal to my publisher, Edmund Wee, since the first edition is now out of print in Singapore (even if you can still find the Infinity Plus edition online). He countered with putting together a new collection, and I came up with the idea of doing a Selected Stories book that draws from my three previous collections, as well as one uncollected story and a brand new one written specifically for this book. Here are the contents:

• The Stargirl and the Potter
• Always a Risk
• Wombat Fishbone
• King of Hearts
• Strange Mammals
• Great Responsibility
• The Time Traveller’s Son
• Slowly Slowly Slowly
• Kopi Luwak
• Complications of the Flesh
• Most Excellent and Lamentable
• Bodhisattva at the Heat Death of the Universe
• Bogeymen
• Ikan Berbudi (Wise Fish)

At the same, I pitched my long-languishing novella, which my (now ex-)agent had not done anything with for four years, and thankfully Edmund agreed to take it as well. But after receiving some additional feedback, I realised that it didn’t address the world that we’re living in now, which is very different from the optimism and openness of four years ago. So I’m currently revising the manuscript to make it more relevant (and, frankly, better), and aiming at a mid-August deadline to turn it in.

So yeah, two new works of fiction by me out next year. It’s nice to be out in front of my own writing again. 🙂

The Delightfully Strange Short Fiction of Dorothy Tse

(Note: much of this was included in my review on Goodreads, but this book is so exceptional that I wanted to give it a bit more attention here.)

One of the best parts of getting invited to moderate a panel discussion at a convention or literary festival is encountering the work of writers you might not have ordinarily come across. Such was the case with Dorothy Tse, who appeared on one of my panels at the 2017 George Town Literary Festival.

Tse writes in Chinese and reads in Cantonese, and is highly regarded for her stories in her native Hong Kong. However, those of us who read in English now have the extraordinary fortune to have Nicky Harman’s lyrical translation of Snow and Shadow, an extraordinary collection of oneiric pieces that feel at home next to the best of Angela Carter and Kelly Link.

Tse draws from a deep well of dreamlike imagery and delightfully strange premises, such as men bartering body parts for sexual favours, a father donating his head to his son when the young man’s goes missing, an apartment block where the units never stay in the same location, and a wife slowly transforming into a fish. As well, the title story is the most remarkable retelling of Snow White since Neil Gaiman’s “Snow Glass Apples.”

I LOVED this collection, and highly recommend it to anyone into surreal and strange short fiction. It was far and away my favourite book read in 2017. Check out these reviews at Words Without Borders and World Literature Today, and read Tse’s interview answers for The PEN Ten.

Dorothy Tse’s is a voice that deserves a wide and appreciative audience. However you can find this book, do so; you’ll thank me.

My Books Available at Indie Shops

We’re barrelling headlong towards Xmas, and I just wanted to give a holiday reminder of where you can find my books (if you felt inclined to give them as gifts), with a special focus on independent bookshops, which are the heart and soul of bookselling worldwide.

USA: Quail Ridge Books* | Books Are Magic | Elliott Bay

Penang: Gerakbudaya Bookshop

Singapore: Kinokuniya** | BooksActually

 
* My titles from Infinity Plus are available for order at any bookstore in the IndieBound network, but I wanted to emphasise these three in particular, and especially Quail Ridge, which is my favourite bookshop in all of the USA.

** I recognise that Kinokuniya is a chain with stores all over the world, but the main Singaporean store on Orchard Road has been extraordinarily supportive of me and my career, and the folks who work there are so knowledgeable that it feels like an indie.

GTLF 2017 in Pictures

I had a phenomenal time at the 2017 George Town Literary Festival last month. After the insanity of the Singapore Writers Festival (over 25,000 in attendance, a 25% jump from last year!), it was wonderful to attend a more intimate festival, even if it also boasted its highest-ever attendance at 4,500 people. Both the panels I moderated were very well-attended, and I got to see existing friends and make some wonderful new ones. As well as patronise the very well maintained festival bookstore run by Gerakbudaya Bookshop. George Town is a lovely place to spend a long weekend, and the festival was run expertly well; I can’t thank all the organisers, staff and volunteers enough for making it such an enjoyable experience.

I had such a great time that I often forgot to take photos, but here are just a few.

With Jelena Dinic and Laksmi Pamuntjak after the Opening Ceremony

With Marc de Faoite and Sonny Liew in the festival bookstore

The festival bookstore run by Gerakbudaya was kind enough to stock some of my books

Lunch at a nearby hawker centre, with Sharon Bakar, Marc de Faoite, Anthony Cummins and Marco Ferrarese

With Zen Cho, Intan Paramaditha, Dorothy Tse and Felicia Yap, for “Braver Worlds: Visions of the Future/Past”

With Bernice Chauly and Edmund Wee, after Bernice’s novel Once We Were There won the inaugural Penang Monthly Book Prize

With Gerður Kristný, Zen Cho, Paul McVeigh and Arshia Sattar, for “When Immortals Walked Among Us”

Gerakbudaya Bookshop’s actual Penang store, to which I paid homage (and some money)

My final book haul: The Door by Dorothy Tse (trans. Natascha Bruce), Snow and Shadow by Dorothy Tse (trans. Nicky Harman); Bloodhoof by Gerður Kristný (trans. Rory McTurk); Taboo: Poems by Melizarani T. Selva; El Filibusterismo by José Rizal; and The Face: A Time Code by Ruth Ozeki.

GTLF 2017 Moderator Schedule

This weekend, I’ll be returning to Penang for the 2017 George Town Literary Festival, and I’m delighted to have been asked back as a moderator. And after the almost overwhelming craziness of SWF, it’ll be nice to discuss books and writing in a more intimate setting. I’ll be attending a bunch of panels and readings, as well as the award ceremony for the inaugural Penang Monthly Book Prize (for which Bernice Chauly’s novel Once We Were There, which I edited, is shortlisted), but here are the events that I’m directly involved with:
 

Panel: Braver Worlds: Visions of the Future/Past (moderator)
with Zen Cho, Intan Paramaditha, Dorothy Tse, and Felicia Yap
Bangunan UAB, Heaven (Level 2), 25 Nov, 315–415pm

Speculative, dystopian and fantastical genres have always been a challenge for some, but not for others. These four writers have defined and re-defined the genres they work in and continue to create worlds that defy our imaginations. How do they revision the future and the past? How does the writer act as an agent for the in-between of what is real, plausible and fantastical? And is this the way of writing the future?
 

Panel: When Immortals Walked Among Us (moderator)
with Arshia Sattar, Gerður Kristný, Paul McVeigh, and Zen Cho
Bangunan UAB, Heaven (Level 2), 26 Nov, 1115am–1215pm

There are many commonalities in the world’s mythologies and cosmologies. Greek legends, Norse and Celtic sagas, and Hindu epics all had gods and goddesses who were anthropomorphic and therefore resistant to Joseph Campbell’s argument – ‘that the secret cause of all suffering is mortality itself, which is the prime condition of life.’ Did the immortals deny humans the right to live uninterrupted, guilt-free lives? What is the notion of ‘god’ and its mythos in literature? We examine some of our most enduring myths, the power they still wield in our everyday lives and narratives, and how these stories have evolved from then until now.

SWF 2017 Author Schedule

Tonight, the festivities for the 2017 Singapore Writers Festival will kick off, and I’m happy to have been invited as a featured author again this year. I’ll be around for most of the festival, but here are the events that I’m directly involved with.

Launch: New Titles by Epigram Books (Launch Pad and Regrettable Things That Happened Yesterday [ FB event ] (moderator)
with Shelly Bryant and Jennani Durai
The Arts House, Gallery II, 05 Nov, 400-500pm

Panel: The Evolution of the Singapore Short Story
with Koh Tai Ann (mod) Clara Chow and Ovidia Yu
The Arts House, Blue Room, 10 Nov, 700-800pm

Panel: Writing Between the Genre Lines
This session is part of the Speculative Fiction focus.
with Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé (mod), Aliette De Bodard and O Thiam Chin
The Arts House, Blue Room, 11 Nov, 830-930pm

BNSSSv3 Honourable Mentions

The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Three is now at the printers, and will be available in bookstores next month; we’ll launch the anthology at Kinokuniya in the afternoon of October 28th. In case you missed it, here is the table of contents.

As with Volumes One and Two, a list Honourable Mentions appears in the back of the book; these were stories that guest editor Cyril Wong and I thought had merit, and even though they didn’t make the anthology, they are very much still worth reading:

1. Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, “Fits and Starts,” adda (Aug 2016), http://www.addastories.org/fits-and-starts/
2. Alice Bianchi-Clark, “Rosemary,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore Vol. 14, No. 4 (Oct 2015), http://qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1215
3. Shelly Bryant, “Case Study: Training Programme,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore Vol. 14, No. 3 (Jul 2015), http://qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1194
4. Charmaine Chan, “From ‘The Magic Circle’,” We Are a Website No. 2 (Oct 2015), http://www.weareawebsite.com/charmaine-chan.html
5. Agnes Chew, “Between Us, an Infinite Distance,” Junoesq Literary Journal No. 3 (Feb 2015), http://www.junoesq.com/?p=1083
6. Grace Chia, The Cuckoo Conundrum (The NTU Residencies Chapbooks) (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2016).
7. Clara Chow, “Ida Abandons Ship,” Blunderbuss Magazine (6 Jan 2015), http://www.blunderbussmag.com/ida-abandons-ship
8. Chua Yini, “The Changeling,” We R Family: An Anthology, ed. Grace Chia (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2016), 37-53
9. Noelle Q. de Jesus, “First Love,” Blood: Collected Stories (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015), 193-194
10. ———, “Polar Vortex,” Blood: Collected Stories (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015), 195-216
11. Melissa De Silva, “The Adventures of Bear Man,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore Vol. 15, No. 2 (Apr 2016), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1259
12. Daniel Emlyn-Jones, “The Last City,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore Vol. 14, No. 1 (Jan 2015), http://qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1155
13. Clarissa Goenawan, “The Visit,” Esquire (Singapore) (Jun/Jul 2016), “Montblanc Fiction Writing Project,” 152-153
14. Jon Gresham, “The Model,” Esquire (Singapore) (Apr 2016), 131
15. Heng Siok Tian, “An Apsara in Her Lotus Pond,” The Adopted: Stories from Angkor (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015), 55-67
16. Balli Kaur Jaswal, “Private Places,” BooksActually’s Gold Standard 2016, ed. Julie Koh (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2016), 165-181
17. Joseph Ng Zhen Ye, “Looking for the Moon,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore Vol. 14, No. 1 (Jan 2015), http://qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1153
18. Ng Yi-Sheng, “No Other City,” LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction No. 4 (Spring 2015): 51-59
19. ———, “The Boy, the Swordfish, the Bleeding Island,” LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction No. 6 (Spring 2016): 19-34
20. O Thiam Chin, “Exes,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore Vol. 14, No. 3 (Jul 2015), http://qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1196
21. Victor Fernando R. Ocampo, “Brother to Space, Sister to Time,” LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction No. 6 (Spring 2016): 91-116
22. Phan Ming Yen, “Lux Aeterna,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore Vol. 14, No. 2 (Apr 2015), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1173
23. ———, “The Mother,” The Adopted: Stories from Angkor (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015), 89-99
24. Quek Shin Yi, “Before,” Drunken Boat No. 21, “Union” folio (2015), http://www.drunkenboat.com/db21/singapore-arts/quek-shin-yi
25. Vinita Ramani, “Junk,” Esquire (Singapore) (Sep 2015), 107
26. Ivan Lim Sheng, “Redemption,” Esquire (Singapore) (Aug 2016), “Montblanc Fiction Writing Project,” 104-105
27. Inez Tan, “Crawling,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore Vol. 14, No. 4 (Oct 2015), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1214
28. Simon Tay, “Grandmother: A Horror Story,” Middle and First: Stories (Singapore: Landmark Books, 2016), 181-215
29. Verena Tay, “The Building,” Spaces: People/Places (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2016), 79-85
30. Shaista Tayabali, “PSSU,” We Are a Website No. 3 (Feb 2016), http://www.weareawebsite.com/shaista-tayabali.html
31. Jeremy Tiang, “Meatpacking,” Drunken Boat No. 21, “Union” folio (2015), http://www.drunkenboat.com/db21/singapore-arts/jeremy-tiang
32. ———, “1997,” The Brooklyn Rail No. 9 (Sep 2015), http://brooklynrail.org/2015/09/fiction/1997
33. Maximilian Wong Wei Han, “Born in the wrong time, under the wrong star, in love with the moon,” Esquire (Singapore) (Jun/Jul 2016), “Montblanc Fiction Writing Project,” 150-151
34. Daryl Qilin Yam, “Ichi-e, or, One Soup, Three Side Dishes,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore Vol. 15, No. 3 (Jul 2016), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1271
35. JY Yang, “Her Majesty’s Lamborghini and the Girl with the Fish Tank,” LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction No. 6 (Spring 2016): 75-90
36. Yeo Wei Wei, “Branch,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore Vol. 14, No. 3 (Jul 2015), http://qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1171
37. ———, “The Art of Being Naked,” These Foolish Things & Other Stories (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015), 47-65
38. Yeow Kai Chai, “Flash Point,” The Adopted: Stories from Angkor (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015), 123-131
39. ———, “Red Dust,” The Adopted: Stories from Angkor (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015), 161-169
40. Yong Shu Hoong, “Suspended Animation,” The Adopted: Stories from Angkor (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015), 35-43

Announcing Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Three

Cover design by Yong Wen Yeu

---

I am very proud to announce the contents and cover design for the third volume of the Best New Singaporean Short Stories anthology series, guest edited by Cyril Wong, to be published in October 2017 by Epigram Books, and launched at Kinokuniya later that month.

The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Three gathers the finest Singaporean stories published in 2015 and 2016, selected from hundreds published in journals, magazines, anthologies and single-author collections. Accompanying the stories are the editor’s preface and an extensive list of honourable mentions for further reading.

Here is the table of contents:

1. Cyril Wong | Preface
2. Jason Erik Lundberg | Introduction
3. Yeo Wei Wei | These Foolish Things
4. Yeoh Jo-Ann | The Thing
5. Jennifer Anne Champion | See It Coming
6. Jon Gresham | Walking Backwards Up Bukit Timah Hill
7. Ovidia Yu | Salvation Solution
8. Andrew Cheah | A Century of Loneliness
9. Daryl Qilin Yam | Thing Language
10. Jason Wee | The City Beneath the City
11. Amanda Lee Koe | Last Night I Dreamt That Harry Was In Love With Me
12. Sam Ng | Prices
13. Yeow Kai Chai | Dark Shades
14. Andrew Yuen | Love in a Time of Dying
15. Joelyn Alexandra | Junk Mail
16. Leonora Liow | Falling Water
17. SC Gordon | Claire
18. Nuraliah Norasid | Madam Jamilah’s Family Portrait
19. Jollin Tan | Better Places
20. Noelle Q. de Jesus | In the End
21. Su Leong | Peelings
22. Verena Tay | The Sensualist
23. Eva Aldea | Baba Ganoush
24. Melissa De Silva | It Happened at Mount Pleasant
25. O Thiam Chin | Campfire
26. Clara Chow | Want Less
27. Philip Holden | Library
28. Manish Melwani | The Tigers of Bengal

Please join us for the book launch at Kinokuniya Neo SIMS (the main store on Orchard Road) on 28 October at 2:30pm. Cyril and I will be co-moderating, and the event will feature contributors Nuraliah Norasid, Clara Chow and Melissa De Silva.

EB Authors at Kino for World Book Day!

If I could put on my editor’s hat for a moment, four of my authors at Epigram Books, as well as your humble narrator, will be appearing this Saturday afternoon at Kinokuniya’s Singapore main store as part of their World Book Day celebrations!

At 2pm, I will be moderating a panel on “Worlds Beyond Words” with our #EBFP2015-longlisted authors: Daryl Qilin Yam, Imran Hashim and Kevin Martens Wong. All three of their first novels (Kappa Quartet, Annabelle Thong and Altered Straits) go beyond Singapore’s shores to other places (and in Kevin’s case, to parallel worlds), so the discussion should be a fascinating one.

And at 4pm, Balli Kaur Jaswal will be appearing for a meet-the-author session to promote her new novel Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, recently published by HarperCollins UK! (And although the session will focus on the new novel, copies of Inheritance and Sugarbread will be available for sale.)

So come celebrate World Book Day with us Saturday, and get some fantastic books signed!

A Taste of My Long-Form Fiction

My agent, Kristopher O’Higgins (Scribe Agency), is currently shopping around two pieces of my long-form fiction, and I realized recently that there’s almost no trace of them here at my website (aside from a brief mention in my bio). So I’ve decided to put up a preview of each work, just a few thousand words, to give y’all a taste, and hopefully whet your appetite for more:

A Fickle and Restless Weapon — a 130,000-word Calvino-esque psychological novel about transnational characters using varied art forms to struggle against a Southeast Asian surveillance state. With explosions.

Quek Zhou Ma (who goes under the stage name Zed), an internationally successful dramatist, arrives home in the equatorial island-nation of Tinhau after a long absence in order to attend the funeral of his older sister, who has committed suicide by train. As he deals with conflicting feelings about a homeland he hardly recognizes, and the lingering questions surrounding his sister’s death, he decides to produce a lavish spare-no-expense production in conjunction with the Ministry of Culture, but opening night is marred by a nearby bombing attributed to a local resistance group calling themselves PAKATAN.

Tara, a transplanted Indian by way of America, works for the Ministry of Culture as a graphic designer, and leads Buddhist meditation circles on the weekends, which is where she first meets Zed. With an uncanny knack for both reading and influencing the behavior of others, she has found herself uneasily associated with PAKATAN, and despite her stance on non-violence she is charged with bringing Zed over to the cause. But as the pair begin to grow closer, she has doubts about whether she can complete her task.

Vahid Nabizadeh, Zed’s creative partner and a master puppeteer, stays in Tinhau after the end of their production. An Iranian Briton, already once removed from his native country, he finds a home in the culture and cuisine of Tinhau, and an unlikely friendship with Kelvin de Vries, an Indo-Dutch son of Tinhau’s most successful business magnate. As Vahid comes to grips with his new life, he inadvertently becomes embroiled in political and financial intrigue that threatens to unbalance the stability of the government itself.

A Fickle and Restless Weapon explores the relationships between these characters, and the ways that they deal with their disaffected identities, as well as the disruption and chaos that occurs when Tinhau is abruptly attacked by the Range, a mysterious cloud formation that appears without warning and destroys without mercy, a weapon as fickle and restless as the human mind.

***

 
The Diary of One Who Disappeared — a 30,000-word novella that takes place 25 years after the events of A Fickle and Restless Weapon, and shares the same fantastical milieu (but can be read as a standalone piece).

Peak oil, the climate crisis, and the economic collapse of the USA in the late 20th century have impacted Tinhau, one of many countries that has depended heavily on the American capitalist engine; yet Tinhau’s government not only has survived the shock, but appears to be thriving.

Lucas Lehrer is a minor functionary in the Department of Economic and Spiritual Development, headquartered at the North American Union’s capitol in New York City. He is tasked with traveling from the NAU to Tinhau via airship to liaise with officials there and extend the offer of partnership. Lucas’s immediate supervisor on the mission is his estranged wife Ailene, and he hopes that the trip will also reinvigorate their failing marriage.

After arriving at their destination, they are met with religious and cultural differences that cause negotiations to break down. Ailene announces her intention of divorce as soon as they return to NYC, and in an act of rebellion Lucas decides to request asylum to stay in Tinhau. As he begins his new job at Tinhau’s Ministry of Stability, he encounters an odd series of coincidences, in which his deep-seated desires start coming true. He also befriends an emerging Chinese-language poet named Yu-Wei, a young woman who is not what she seems, and who may not be from our universe at all.

***

 
Hope you enjoy!

Read The Question of Red for free

I was recently asked by Gareth Richards of Gerakbudaya Bookshop in Penang to pick the three best books I read that were published in 2016. It was a real challenge narrowing it down to only three (I could have easily listed 20 or 30), but in the end I chose one graphic novel / collected comics volume (Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda), one short fiction collection (The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu), and one novel (The Question of Red by Laksmi Pamuntjak), the last of which I want to talk just a bit more about.

Laksmi Pamuntjak has published collections of verse and short stories, and five editions of the Jakarta Good Food Guide. She is proficiently bilingual in both Indonesian and English, and has translated two works of Indonesian poet and essayist Goenawan Mohamad. The Question of Red was first published in Indonesian in 2012 by Gramedia Pustaka Utama, and became an instant hit. The German edition did so as well, winning the LiBeraturpreis in 2016, appearing on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Top 8 list of the best books of the Frankfurt Book Fair 2015, and being named best work of fiction from Asia, America, Latin America, and the Caribbean translated into German on the Weltempfaenger (Receivers of the World) list.

An English translation was hurriedly produced by Gramedia in 2013, but Laksmi later did a ground-up revisiting of the text, transcreating the novel in English, and this is the edition published earlier this year by AmazonCrossing in the US and by Speaking Tiger in the Indian Subcontinent.

I met Laksmi when she was a featured author at the 2015 Singapore Writers Festival, and she signed my copy of the Indonesia-only limited English edition (which may now be a collector’s item, as it’s now out of print), but urged me to find the new edition in 2016 and read it instead. Which is what I did. And no other novel I read this year came even close to what an amazing book this is. You can find the description and effusive blurbs on the author’s official book page, so I won’t rehash them here, except to say that I LOVED this novel. It took me two months to read, which is a long time for me, even for a book of this size, because I kept stopping to savour the writing and the imagery and the depth of feeling that infuses every page. I’m just in awe of how epic and heartbreaking it is, and written so beautifully. The Question of Red is an amazing work of art, tackling darkness and redemption and love, and it inspires me to get back to my own writing pronto.

And I was puzzled that the novel has frankly received little attention in the American book world. It’s gotten a few reviews, but none yet in mainstream literary publications. It is unfortunately entirely possible that it has been overlooked by review venues and bookstores because of its Amazonian association (which, if true, is an incredible shame). I am no fan of Amazon myself, but I’m quite willing to put that aside in order to help shine a bigger light on this incredible novel.

The list price of the book on Amazon is $14.95, but it’s marked down to $8.67, which is already an incredible deal. However, starting now and continuing for the next three months, the book is absolutely free to read as part of the Prime Reading program in the US. Meaning that until the end of March, if you’re an Amazon Prime member, you can read the book for zero dollars (you should automatically see the “Read for Free” option).

You owe it to yourself to read this remarkable book, and with prices so low (or free), there’s really no reason not to. And once you’ve read it, do leave a review on the Amazon page. Go on, make this one of your New Year’s resolutions.

The 2016 George Town Literary Festival

This past weekend, I flew up to Penang for the 2016 George Town Literary Festival. It was my first time in Penang, and I definitely want to go back when I actually have the time to check the place out. George Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and so many beautiful old buildings are protected, including Wisma Yeap Chor Ee (WYCE), which was the main GTLF venue. (Although this meant no air-conditioning during some very sweltering days.)

I had a wonderful time seeing some familiar faces (Marc de Faoite, Sharon Bakar, Amanda Lee Koe, Tash Aw, Darryl Whetter), as well as making new friends (James Scudamore, Tishani Doshi, Jérôme Bouchaud, Faisal Tehrani, Ismail Gareth Richards, Amir Muhammad). I was also happy to finally meet the indefatigable Bernice Chauly in person; we’ve been Facebook friends for years, and I’ll be editing her first novel for Epigram Books in 2017.

The festival theme, Hiraeth, was threaded throughout the many panels and readings over the weekend, in explorations of longing, homelands, identity, and the role of fiction. It was a privilege to hear from such thoughtful writers who’d come from all over the world to talk about their work in the context of this framework.

Carol the Coral: My New Picture Book!

A couple of months ago, I was approached by Goodstuph, a brand manager and advertising agency in Singapore, about writing a new children’s picture book for a campaign they were doing with development company Keppel Land, concerning marine ecosystem conservation in Keppel Bay. As part of their “Homes in the Sea” initiative, they’ve been growing young coral in a nursery and then transplanting them to an existing coral reef at King’s Dock.

After meeting and discussing the idea, I came up with Carol the Coral, a story about a feisty young coral who discovers King’s Dock while looking for a new home, and who must contend with a grumpy clam who wants the spot that she has claimed. The book was to consist of four chapters, all of which had to be approved by the client, and after a bit of fumbling at the beginning while trying to understand what they were looking for, I sent them a plot summary for each chapter, and then got to work on breaking these down on the page level.

Once the text was written, artist Annabella Goh went to work on adapting it visually and laying out the text on each page. And she did such an amazing job enhancing the story through her whimsical art style. Carol is incredibly cute (while also quite capable of handling herself), and there were even some surprises that made me laugh out loud (such as seeing the pistol shrimp henchmen in chapter 3 really look like gangsters; one has a missing eye, and the other wears a trilby).

Chapter 1 was released at the Keppel Land Live FB page on 28 May, and each subsequent chapter every three or four days later; the final chapter went up today! Each chapter is introduced with a question to the viewer, and if you answer correctly, you’re put in the running to win to tickets to the new Pixar film, Finding Dory! (Which I’m totally taking Anya to see in the theatre.) The contest ends on 12 June 2016, 11.59pm UTC+08:00, so don’t delay!

In addition, Keppel Land will be producing a limited-edition print book that publishes the entire story. As much as I wish it would be available in bookstores along with my other books, they’re not interested in becoming a publisher, and will only be using the book for giveaways. So really, the best way for you to see it is online.

I have to say that this has been a great experience, and I’ve learned a lot from it. I had the preconceived notion that doing corporate work would be soul-deadening, but the collaboration with Anna, and the working relationship with the folks at both Keppel Land and Goodstuph, has been quite fulfilling! Also, since Bo Bo and Cha Cha is currently on hiatus, I’m especially glad to have a new picture book come out this year.

So please enjoy the adventures of Carol the Coral!

BBCC6 Mini-Whistlestop Tour on 14 Nov

If you missed the recent launch of A Curious Bundle for Bo Bo and Cha Cha at the Singapore Writers Festival, you have another chance to see me publicly launch the book and do a storytelling session from it. I’ll be conducting a mini-whistlestop tour this Saturday the 14th at Woods in the Books‘ two locations: at their flagship store in Tiong Bahru at 1130am, and then at Books Ahoy! (on level 2 of the Orchard FORUM) at 300pm.

As with the SWF launch, my daughter Anya will be along to help me out, and to voice the little baby animal in the story (which is beyond cute, so you have to come). See you there!

A Curious Bundle for Bo Bo and Cha Cha

Book 6 in my panda picture book series, A Curious Bundle for Bo Bo and Cha Cha, has just arrived from the printers! It can be ordered right now online directly from Epigram Books, and will be stocked in bookstores all over Singapore within a couple of weeks.

I know I say this with every new BB&CC book, but this one is probably my favourite. Back when I thought that this would be the final one*, I decided that it would call back to the previous books in the series, so you’ll find many, many characters you’ve encountered already. It was a challenge to do this without confusing potential readers (especially the little ones), but editor Sheri Tan and I came up with a smooth way to do so that works quite well. Also, I’m quite proud with the pacing and rhythm; a lot happens, but it’s a page-turner.

So I’m very proud that this story is now a fully realised book, and that it will be available for kids everywhere very very soon. If you would like to review it for a newspaper, magazine or litblog, please contact Sophia Susanto, the Sales & Marketing Executive at Epigram Books. Again, you can sample the book here and/or order a copy right now from the Epigram Books website, and rate/review it on Goodreads.

Yay!

* A Curious Bundle for Bo Bo and Cha Cha is the last book currently under contract with Epigram Books, although my publisher has already said informally that he’d be happy to sign me up for two more.

BNSSSv2 Honourable Mentions

The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Two is now at the printers, and will be available in bookstores later this month; we’ll launch the anthology at the 2015 Singapore Writers Festival on the evening of November 1st. In case you missed it, here is the table of contents.

As with Volume One, I’m happy to reveal the Honourable Mentions listed in the back of the book; congratulations to all of the authors below:

1. Alfian Sa’at, “A Penunggu Story,” Eastern Heathens: An Anthology of Subverted Asian Folklore, ed. Amanda Lee Koe & Ng Yi-Sheng (Ethos Books, 2013).
2. Ann Ang, “Gedong Gold,” Balik Kampung 2B: Contemplations, ed. Verena Tay (Math Paper Press, 2013).
3. Anurak Saelaow Hao, “Left Behind,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 13:1 (2014), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1070.
4. Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, “Grandmother,” Starry Island: New Writing From Singapore, Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing 26:1 (2014).
5. Shelly Bryant, “Enough,” Balik Kampung 2A: People and Places, ed. Verena Tay (Math Paper Press, 2013).
6. ———, “Sila,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 13:2 (2014), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1098.
7. ———, “Tan Swee Nee, Barber,” Junoesq no. 1 (2014), http://www.junoesq.com/?p=559.
8. Colin Cheong, “Smile, Singapore,” Singapore Noir, ed. Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan (Akashic Books, 2014).
9. Clara Chow, “Buying a Wig,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 13:3 (2014), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1115.
10. ———, “The Golden Ball,” Junoesq no. 2 (2014), http://www.junoesq.com/?p=790.
11. Damon Chua, “Saiful and the Pink Edward VII,” Singapore Noir, ed. Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan (Akashic Books, 2014).
12. Dave Chua, “Bedok Reservoir,” Singapore Noir, ed. Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan (Akashic Books, 2014).
13. ———, “The God of Cats,” From the Belly of the Cat, ed. Stephanie Ye (Math Paper Press, 2013).
14. ———, “The Zookeeper,” Passages: Stories of Unspoken Journeys, ed. Yong Shu Hoong (Ethos Books, 2013).
15. Ian Chung, “The Faithful Leap,” The Cadaverine Collection: New Writing From Under 30s (The Cadaverine, 2014).
16. Tania De Rozario, “Reasons for the Rain,” The Substation Fairytales: Stories in The End, ed. Christopher Ong (The Substation, 2013).
17. Ashwini Devare, “Batik Rain,” Batik Rain and Other Stories (Haranand Publications, 2014).
18. Colin Goh, “Last Time,” Singapore Noir, ed. Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan (Akashic Books, 2014).
19. Jon Gresham, “A Girl and a Guy in a Kijang in Kemang,” Eastern Heathens: An Anthology of Subverted Asian Folklore, ed. Amanda Lee Koe & Ng Yi-Sheng (Ethos Books, 2013).
20. Han Han, “Low-Class Animals,” trans. Jeremy Tiang, Passages: Stories of Unspoken Journeys, ed. Yong Shu Hoong (Ethos Books, 2013).
21. Philip Holden, “Penguins on the Perimeter,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 13:4 (2014), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1130.
22. Joshua Ip, “Peace is a Foot Reflexology Parlour,” Balik Kampung 2A: People and Places, ed. Verena Tay (Math Paper Press, 2013).
23. ———, “Robotz Attacks Teh Citeh,” From the Belly of the Cat, ed. Stephanie Ye (Math Paper Press, 2013).
24. Philip Jeyaretnam, “Strangler Fig,” Singapore Noir, ed. Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan (Akashic Books, 2014).
25. Justin Ker, “The Forgetting Shop,” The Space Between the Raindrops (Epigram Books, 2014).
26. Jinny Koh, “Fish Head,” The Conium Review, Nov 2014, http://coniumreview.com/blog/fish-head/.
27. Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, “The Draughtman’s Snow Globe,” Starry Island: New Writing From Singapore, Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing 26:1 (2014).
28. ———, “Flying in the Face of Denouement,” Balik Kampung 2B: Contemplations, ed. Verena Tay (Math Paper Press, 2013).
29. Lydia Kwa, “Speaking in Tongues,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 13:2 (2014), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1097.
30. Dana Lam, “Mother,” Body Boundaries: The First EtiquetteSG Anthology of Women’s Writing, ed. Tania De Rozario, Zarina Muhammad & Krishna Udayasankar (The Literary Centre, 2014).
31. Wei Fen Lee, “Cure Us of Prayers,” Balik Kampung 2B: Contemplations, ed. Verena Tay (Math Paper Press, 2013).
32. Amanda Lee Koe, “Mint,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 12:3 (2013), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1025.
33. ———, “Panda Cunt, Bear Gall,” Starry Island: New Writing From Singapore, Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing 26:1 (2014).
34. Daryl Li, “A Secret Literature: The Literature of Ong Hwee Teng and the Possibilities of Disappearance,” Second Prize Winner of the 2013 Golden Point Award, English Short Story category, https://www.nac.gov.sg/docs/default-document-library/sse_2nd_lizhenhongdaryl.pdf.
35. Li Huijia, “First Weave,” Eastern Heathens: An Anthology of Subverted Asian Folklore, ed. Amanda Lee Koe & Ng Yi-Sheng (Ethos Books, 2013).
36. Sharon Lim, “Amy’s Story,” Balik Kampung 2A: People and Places, ed. Verena Tay (Math Paper Press, 2013).
37. Eric Low, “Jack & Alice,” The Substation Fairytales: Stories in The End, ed. Christopher Ong (The Substation, 2013).
38. Susheela Menon, “Driftwood,” Life is a Roller Coaster, ed. AJ Huffman & April Salzano (Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2014).
39. Marc Nair, “Soon,” Passages: Stories of Unspoken Journeys, ed. Yong Shu Hoong (Ethos Books, 2013).
40. Ng Yi-Sheng, “Baby Shoes,” The Storygraph, 20 Feb 2014, http://thestorygraph.com/baby-shoes/.
41. ———, “Lion City,” Starry Island: New Writing From Singapore, Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing 26:1 (2014).
42. Nurul H, “Unravelled,” Body Boundaries: The First EtiquetteSG Anthology of Women’s Writing, ed. Tania De Rozario, Zarina Muhammad & Krishna Udayasankar (The Literary Centre, 2014).
43. O Thiam Chin, “At the Suvarnabhumi Airport,” Asiatic 7:1 (2013).
44. ———, “Swordsman,” Love, or Something Like Love (Math Paper Press, 2013).
45. ———, “The Verdict,” Esquire (Singapore), Sep 2013.
46. Victor Fernando R. Ocampo, “Blessed Are the Hungry,” Apex Magazine no. 62, Jul 2014.
47. ———, “Entanglement,” LONTAR no. 2 (2014).
48. ———, “How My Sister Leonora Brought Home a Wife,” Lakeside Circus, Feb 2014.
49. ———, “A Secret Map of Shanghai”, Strange Horizons, Nov 2013.
50. Wayne Rée, “The Flying Man,” Tales From a Tiny Room (Math Paper Press, 2014).
51. ———, “Water Bombs,” Tales From a Tiny Room (Math Paper Press, 2014).
52. Stephanie Scott, “Pulau Brani,” First Prize Winner of the Summer 2014 Writers Village “Best Writing” Award, http://www.writers-village.org/14-1-scott.php.
53. Ben Slater, “Resort Time,” LONTAR no. 3 (2014).
54. Dora Tan, “The Only Time I Wished I Could Read,” Junoesq no. 2 (2014), http://www.junoesq.com/?p=783.
55. Jonathan Tan Ghee Tiong, “The City in a Pinstripe Suit,” New Asian Writing, Feb 2014, http://www.new-asian-writing.com/the-city-in-a-pinstripe-suit-by-jonathan-tan-ghee-tiong/.
56. Paul Tan, “The Cat Auntie of Lengkok Bahru,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 12:2 (2013), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1004.
57. Tan Sihan, “The Immigrant,” Ceriph no. 6 (2013).
58. Verena Tay, “The Building” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 12:4 (2013), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1046
59. Sharlene Teo, “Molasse,” The Bohemyth, Mar 2014, http://thebohemyth.com/2014/03/05/sharlene-teo/.
60. ———, “Volunteers,” Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts 1:2 (2013).
61. Teoh Ren Jie, “Purple Lights,” Ceriph no. 6 (2013).
62. Jeremy Tiang, “Lifeplan,” Esquire (Singapore), Jun 2013.
63. ———, “National Day,” Ambit no. 216 (2014).
64. ———, “Sophia’s Party,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 12:4 (2013), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1047.
65. Samantha Toh, “Handsome,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 13:1 (2014), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1067.
66. ———, “The Jump,” From the Belly of the Cat, ed. Stephanie Ye (Math Paper Press, 2013).
67. Tiffany Tsao, “What Is Being Erased,” LONTAR no. 2 (2014).
68. Jemimah James Wei, “George,” From the Belly of the Cat, ed. Stephanie Ye (Math Paper Press, 2013).
69. Kane Wheatley-Holder, “Space, Time and Chicken Rice,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 13:4 (2014), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1128.
70. Cyril Wong, “Cinema,” Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me and Other Stories (Epigram Books, 2014).
71. Woon Chet Choon, “The Bush,” Balik Kampung 2A: People and Places, ed. Verena Tay (Math Paper Press, 2013).
72. Daryl Yam, “The Anus is the Centre of the Soul,” We Are Losing Inertia, ed. Wong Bing Hao (2014), http://issuu.com/binghao5/docs/we_are_losing_inertia_-_issuu.
73. ———, “The Wolves, or, Have You Ever Read Tao Lin?” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 13:4 (2014), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1133.
74. JY Yang, “Arachnophobia,” Body Boundaries: The First EtiquetteSG Anthology of Women’s Writing, ed. Tania De Rozario, Zarina Muhammad & Krishna Udayasankar (The Literary Centre, 2014).
75. ———, “Mother’s Day,” LONTAR no. 3 (2014).
76. ———, “Old Domes,” We See a Different Frontier, ed. Fabio Fernandes & Djibril al-Ayad (Futurefire.net Publishing, 2013).
77. ———, “Storytelling for the Night Clerk,” Strange Horizons, 16 Jun 2014, http://www.strangehorizons.com/2014/20140616/storytelling-f.shtml.
78. ———, “Tiger Baby,” From the Belly of the Cat, ed. Stephanie Ye (Math Paper Press, 2013).
79. Stephanie Ye, “Foreign Land” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 12:2 (2013), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1001.
80. Robert Yeo, “Something to Remember,” Balik Kampung 2A: People and Places, ed. Verena Tay (Math Paper Press, 2013).
81. Zhang Ruihe, “The Calling,” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 12:4 (2013), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1043.
82. Zizi Azah, “Such Great Heights,” Balik Kampung 2B: Contemplations, ed. Verena Tay (Math Paper Press, 2013).

Announcing The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Two

Cover design by Lydia Wong
Cover photograph by Malvin Ng

---

I am very proud to announce the contents and cover design for the second volume of The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories anthology series, to be published in October 2015 by Epigram Books, and officially launched at the Singapore Writers Festival along with LONTAR issues #4 and 5. This instalment is almost 20% bigger than its predecessor, and the number of female contributors jumped from 50% to 67%.

The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Two gathers twenty-four of the finest stories from Singaporean writers published in 2013 and 2014, selected from hundreds published in journals, magazines, anthologies and single-author collections. These pieces examine life in Singapore, beyond its borders to Toronto, California, Shanghai, Andhra Pradesh, Pyongchon and Paris, as well as to the distant past and the far future. Accompanying the stories are the editor’s introduction and an extensive list of honourable mentions for further reading.

Here is the table of contents:

1. Jason Erik Lundberg | Introduction
2. Evan Adam Ang | A Day In The Death
3. O Thiam Chin | The Cat That Disappeared
4. JY Yang | Patterns of a Murmuration, in Billions of Data Points
5. Jeremy Tiang | Toronto
6. Tania De Rozario | Certainty
7. Samantha Toh | White Noise
8. Yu-Mei Balasingamchow | Visiting
9. Cheryl Julia Lee | A Red Meteor in the Margins
10. Amanda Lee Koe | Why Do Chinese People Have Slanted Eyes?
11. Gemma Pereira | Mama at Owen Road
12. Andrew Cheah | Anaesthesia
13. Kirstin Chen | Foreign and Domestic
14. Victor Fernando R. Ocampo | I m d 1 in 10
15. Wong Shu Yun | A Short History of the Sun
16. Ng Yi-Sheng | The Crocodile Prince
17. Jennani Durai | Tenali Raman Redux
18. Jinny Koh | Off Duty
19. Daryl Yam | A Dream in Pyongchon
20. Stephanie Ye | Meat Bone Tea
21. Karen Kwek | The Moral Support of Presence
22. Sharlene Teo | Coast
23. Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan | Reel
24. Joshua Ip | The Man Who Turned Into a Photocopier
25. Claire Tham | The Judge

Bo Bo and Cha Cha and the Lost Child

Book 5 in my panda picture book series, Bo Bo and Cha Cha and the Lost Child, has arrived from the printers and can be ordered online directly from Epigram Books; it’ll be stocked in bookstores all over Singapore within a couple of weeks.

This is probably my favourite of the Bo Bo and Cha Cha books to date (although each new one seems to be my favourite, but never mind). Each of these books has been written with my daughter Anya in mind, to be something that she’ll enjoy and also learn from. Book 1 is about having two different homes, but feeling safe and welcome in each one. Book 2 is about some less obvious but still fun things to do in Singapore. Book 3 is about tolerance and friendship. Book 4 is about having fun with cooking. And Book 5 is about self-reliance and spatial intelligence. (Yes, this is reductive, and the books do much more besides, but if you want to ascribe lessons, here they are.)

The other books have things that Anya can relate to, especially in terms of the female characters, but I wanted Bo Bo and Cha Cha and the Lost Child to be a bit more on the nose. It features a little Sikh girl who gets lost while visiting the zoo with her daddy (which, for any parent, is a terribly frightening prospect), but she meets the pandas, and learns how to read a map, and befriends an orangutan girl her age named Saloma (last seen in Book 3), and shows courage and resourcefulness in finding her way back to her appa. I made the little girl, named Kavi, of Indian ethnicity for two reasons: 1) the other books in the series feature a number of ethnic Chinese characters, and although Malays and South Asians appear in the background, none were featured as main characters, which was a practice that needed to change; and 2) Anya has expressed her wish that she could be Indian (even though I’ve tried explaining genetics and ancestry to her), so Kavi is the closest that she can get vicariously to this wish. I even based Kavi’s outfit in the book on one of Anya’s, modelled above.

So I’m very proud that this story is now a fully realised book, and that it will be available for kids everywhere very very soon. If you would like to review it for a newspaper, magazine or litblog, please contact Sophia Susanto, the Sales & Marketing Executive at Epigram Books. Again, you can sample the book here and/or order a copy right now from the Epigram Books website, and rate/review it on Goodreads.

Yay!

Books Published Since 2011

In 2010, Kenny Leck and Karen Wai took a chance on my work, and bought my very first book, Red Dot Irreal, for their bourgeoning publishing house Math Paper Press, publishing it the following year. And I just realized the other day that I’ve had new books (and new editions) come out every year since then, which is kind of remarkable. No wonder I’m so tired all the time!

Every book and version is still in print, and the links below are for where you can buy each individual edition, so you can get exactly what you want.

2011

Red Dot Irreal, Math Paper Press, Oct 2011 (paperback)

2012

Fish Eats Lion: New Singaporean Speculative Fiction (editor), Math Paper Press, Nov 2012 (paperback)

Red Dot Irreal, Revised Second Edition, Infinity Plus Books, Dec 2012 (ebook)

The Alchemy of Happiness, Infinity Plus Books, Dec 2012 (ebook)

A New Home For Bo Bo and Cha Cha (Illustrated by Patrick Yee), Epigram Books, Dec 2012 (paperback)

2013

Bo Bo and Cha Cha’s Big Day Out (Illustrated by Patrick Yee), Epigram Books, May 2013 (paperback)

Embracing the Strange: The Transformative Impact of Speculative Fiction, Math Paper Press, Sep 2013 (chapbook)

LONTAR issue #1 (editor), Math Paper Press, Sep 2013 (paperback)

Red Dot Irreal, Revised Second Edition, Infinity Plus Books, Oct 2013 (paperback)

The Alchemy of Happiness, Infinity Plus Books, Oct 2013 (paperback)

Strange Mammals, Infinity Plus Books, Oct 2013 (paperback & ebook)

The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume One (editor), Epigram Books, Oct 2013 (paperback)

2014

Bo Bo and Cha Cha and the New Year Gift (Illustrated by Patrick Yee), Epigram Books, Jan 2014 (paperback)

LONTAR issue #1 (editor), Math Paper Press, Feb 2014 (ebook)

LONTAR issue #2 (editor), Math Paper Press, Apr 2014 (ebook)

Fish Eats Lion: New Singaporean Speculative Fiction (editor), Infinity Plus Books, Jun 2014 (ebook)

Bo Bo and Cha Cha Cook Up a Storm (Illustrated by Patrick Yee), Epigram Books, Oct 2014 (paperback)

Fish Eats Lion: New Singaporean Speculative Fiction (editor), Infinity Plus Books, Nov 2014 (paperback)

LONTAR issue #2 (editor), Math Paper Press, Nov 2014 (paperback)

LONTAR issue #3 (editor), Epigram Books, Nov 2014 (paperback)

2015

LONTAR issue #3 (editor), Epigram Books, Mar 2015 (ebook)

Bo Bo and Cha Cha and the Lost Child (Illustrated by Patrick Yee), Epigram Books, Apr 2015 (paperback)

LONTAR issue #4 (editor), Epigram Books, May 2015 (paperback and ebook)

The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Two (editor), Epigram Books, Oct 2015 (paperback)

A Close Encounter With Bo Bo and Cha Cha (Illustrated by Patrick Yee), Epigram Books, Oct 2015 (paperback)

LONTAR issue #5 (editor), Epigram Books, Oct 2015 (paperback and ebook)

Fiction Accolades for Epigram Books in 2014

To toot my own editing horn for a moment, 2014 was quite a year for fiction at Epigram Books. In addition to publishing works by debut authors (A Certain Exposure by Jolene Tan and The Space Between the Raindrops by Justin Ker), translations by award-winning authors (The Goddess in the Living Room by Latha and Trivialities About Me and Myself by Yeng Pway Ngon), a new short story collection by one of my favorite poets (Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me and Other Stories by Cyril Wong), and the third issue of LONTAR, we also received the following accolades:

1. The 2014 Singapore Literature Prize for English Fiction (Ministry of Moral Panic by Amanda Lee Koe);

2. 2014 Year’s Best list, The Business Times and The Straits Times (A Certain Exposure, Trivialities About Me and Myself and Last Train from Tanjong Pagar by Koh Hong Teng (graphic novel)*)

3. Top 10 English Singapore Books from 1965-2014, The Business Times (Ministry of Moral Panic);

4. Longlist for the 2014 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award (Ministry of Moral Panic);

5. Six of our titles picked as “Book of the Year” on the Singapore Poetry website** (The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume One, Ministry of Moral Panic***, The Wayang at Eight Milestone by Gregory Nalpon, A Certain Exposure, Trivialities About Me and Myself, and Last Train from Tanjong Pagar).

We must be doing something right over here. 😀

2015 is already shaping up to be an interesting year, with Big Mole by Ming Cher (the long-awaited sequel to his smash hit Spider Boys), translations by Cultural Medallion winners You Jin and Mohamed Latiff Mohamed, LONTAR #4 and #5, and The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Two. I’m hoping to fill a few more slots in the second half of the year, so do keep those manuscripts coming!

 

* Tangentially related, as it is a hybrid of memoir and fiction; the editor on this book was Aditi Shivaramakrishnan.

** My chapbook Embracing the Strange also made this list, to my delight.

*** Ministry of Moral Panic was chosen four separate times for this list.