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Verena Tay (www.verenatay.com) has published two short story collections, Spectre (2012) and Spaces (2016), as well as four collections of plays [In the Company of Women (2004), In the Company of Heroes (2011), Victimology (2011), The Car and Other Plays(2016)]. She has edited twelve volumes of short stories, including the popular Balik Kampung series published by Math Paper Press. An Honorary Fellow at the International Writing Program, University of Iowa (Aug–Nov 2007), she was a Writer-in-Residence at Nanyang Technological University (Aug–Nov 2018). Between Sep 2016 and Mar 2023, she pursued a PhD in Creative Writing with Swansea University through which she wrote her first novel.

In addition, Verena is a veteran theatre practitioner in the Singapore English language theatre scene and an oral storyteller who is driven to make traditional myths/tales/legends relevant for people today. She has taught creative writing, storytelling, voice, speech and presentations skills at various institutions and organisations across Singapore.

A banker by the day and writer by the night, Rahul is an expert at connecting the three Is - idea, insight, and individual who sums up his life as ABC - author, banker, and community builder. Having an illustrious career in banking, he is the Assistant Director of Global Marketing & Strategy at Nanyang Technological University Singapore, Principal of Corporate Advisory Group at Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Udaipur, and Academic Council Member of Jaipuria Institute of Management.

He has authored several books on purpose including “You know the glory, not the story”, “Engineering to Ikigai”, and “An atheist gets the Gita”. His book on Corporate purpose “ESG: Putting purpose back in Finance” is scheduled for release in 2023. An inspiring personality and a thought leader, Rahul regularly speaks on topics that concern millennials such as careers in 21st century, conscious capitalism, and cross-cultural understanding. His books cover purpose from varied lens – ranging for micro memoirs of purposeful journeys to collective Ikigai and Organizational Purpose. His books have a touch of realism and connect to audience at a personal level motivating them to find their purpose in work, in relationship, and in self discovery.

Besides writing, Rahul advises companies & start-ups on their ESG journey towards Sustainable Development Goals and has pushed for inclusion of Conscious Capitalism & ESG in university curriculums. He is the founding President of Indian Scholars' Association Singapore which represents Indian alumni of Singaporean Institutes of Higher Learning including NTU, NUS, SMU, and SUTD. He is also the youngest ever President of IIM Bangalore Alumni Association Singapore.

More about him - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wisdomactivator/

American Suzanne Kamata is a permanent resident of Japan. She is the author or editor of fifteen books including the anthology The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press, 1997), the award-winning short story collection The Beautiful One Has Come (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2012), and the novel The Baseball Widow (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2021). Her work also appears in numerous journals and anthologies including Meridian: The APWT Drunken Boat Anthology of New Writing and the 2017 and  2022 editions of The Best Asian Short Stories. She has been awarded grants by the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She is an associate professor in the department of Global Studies at Naruto University of Education and serves as fiction editor of Kyoto Journal. 

Kamaladevi Aravindan (maiden name Kamala Devi Nair) is an award-winning bilingual (Tamil and Malayalam) writer and playwright, whose writings have been published in India, Canada, Malaysia and Singapore. She was born in Malaysia and moved to Singapore after her marriage.

She is a prolific author who has in her lifetime published more than 162 short stories and essays, 18 stage plays, 300 radio dramas as well as 5 books. She has earned numerous awards and is a celebrated author among established writers since the start of her writing career in her teens.

At fifteen years of age, she was awarded “The Best Writer” in the Johor state (Malaysia) and was praised to be the pride of Tamils by K. Sarangapani. She later studied postmodern literature from Koothupattarai Muthusamy from Tamil Nadu and from Ramanujan, professor from Thanjai University. She also specializes in ‘Parikshartha’ drama literature in Tamil Nadu.

In addition to Singapore and Malaysia, her short stories have been in periodicals from Tamil Naadu, USA and Canada such as Kanaiyazhi, Yukamayini, Oodaru and Uyirmmai. Several of her work has been translated into English as well such as her short story collection Nuval by Sithuraj Ponraj; a short story, “Soorya Grahana Theru” (from the short story collection, Soorya Grahana Theru), by Kavitha Karum, featured inFiction of Singapore in 2014 by National Arts Council, Singapore.

Her writing continues to be studied at higher institutions too such as the short story collections, Nuval and Karavu at the University of Malaya by both undergraduates and postgraduates. Many of her short stories have been selected as examination texts too. Her research articles too have been included at tertiary institutions to represent female writers from Malaysia and Singapore.

In 2014, Kamaladevi Aravindan’s non-fiction book, Nigazhkalayil Naan, that traces her journey in the theatre field received the Jeyanthan Foundation Lifetime Playwright Award. In the same year, her short story, Mugadugal, from the collection Nuval, was chosen as the 2014’s best Tamil short story during the Singapore Writers Festival that year and released as a short film, which won three other awards.

Kamaladevi won the Karigarsozhan Award from Thanjai University in 2011. The Tamil Language and Cultural Society’s Bharathiyar-Bharathidasan Award, Association of Singapore Tamil Writers’ Tamizhavel Award during Muthamizh Vizha in 2016, and Artists Association’s Best Playwright Award are some of the other awards she has acclaimed as a personality in the literary scene. She has also won the Indian Muslim Association’s Societal Literature Contributor Award during the annual literary recognition in 2000, the Research Award for Malaysian Tamil Female Writer in 2013 and the Malaysia Scholars Award in Kedah State in 2017.

Similarly, Kamaladevi has also received many awards in Singapore for her literary works in Malayalam. Her Malayalam plays have been staged at various venues in Singapore and have acclaimed awards. She won Singapore’s Best Playwright Award, Best Director Award and Best Author Award at the drama competition organized by Kairalee Kala Nilayam, Singapore, in 1992. Her play, Silanthivala (Spider Web), has brought her fame in the Malayalam literary scene for being a female script-writer and director.

Three of her books Nuval, Karavu and Sembawang were published under the auspices of a National Arts Council, Singapore grant. Her latest novel, Sembawang, is a Tamil historical fiction which traces the lives of those who lived in the Semawang area in the early 1960s over a span of fifty years also received a National Heritage Board, Singapore, Grant. The English translation of the novel was synchronously published in 2020 by Marshall Cavendish International Asia.

Lily Kong is an author and winner of Singapore’s National Arts Council’s Beyond Words Competition in 2013.

Her English language children books were nominated for the US Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ Crystal Kite Awards and has been translated into Mandarin by a China publisher.

She has 4 books published with Epigram Publisher in Singapore –

Dad’s Too Busy

Dad’s For Sale

Dad’s At Home

Dad’s Dyslexic Too

She also has a book published by Akasaa Publishing in Malaysia –

The Girl who wears Two Watches

She has 5 Chinese books published in Singapore and China.

Rebecca started writing creatively at school and had her first poem published in a national youth anthology, Zodiac, at the age of 11. She started writing short stories during her time at Sheffield Hallam University, where she studied for an undergraduate degree in English and a Masters degree in Writing. Whilst there she won the E. A. Markham Prize for Short Story, and saw her stories published in Dream Songs and two issues of Matter. In 2020 her entry was commended in the Hive South Yorkshire Short Story Competition, and in 2021 her work appeared in Test Signal: Northern Anthology of New Writing, published by Bloomsbury.

Whilst her writing has been on hold for a few years due to her re-training in psychotherapy, Rebecca hopes to develop her research into the arts and mental health and to continue writing where possible. She has particular interest in lyrical prose, prose adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, and explorations on the nature of female violence.

Sheila Armstrong is a writer from the northwest of Ireland. Her first collection of short stories, How To Gut A Fish, was published by Bloomsbury in 2022 and her debut novel, Falling Animals will follow in 2023. Her stories have been listed for the Society of Authors Awards, the Irish Book Awards, the Edge Hill Prize, the Galley Beggar Press Prize and the Kate O’Brien Award. She is an Arts Council Next Generation Artist 2022.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne was born in Dublin. Author of more than thirty books, her work includes The Dancers Dancing, The Shelter of Neighbours, and Fox, Swallow, Scarecrow. Her most recent books are  Twelve Thousand Days: A Memoir (shortlisted for the Michel Déon Award 2020), Little Red and Other Stories (Blackstaff 2020), and   Look! It’s a Woman Writer. Irish Literary Feminisms 1970-2020  (ed.) (Arlen House, 2021) She has published seven collections of short stories and has been the recipient of many literary awards, most recently the Pen Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature, and a Hennessy Hall of Fame Award. A Selected Stories will be published in 2023, by Blackstaff Press. In Autumn 2020 she held the prestigious Burns Scholarship at Boston College. She is a member of Aosdána, and President of the Folklore of Ireland Society.

Has also written plays, books for children. Writes in Irish and English.

Something about Blackstaff as my main publisher for decades?

Lin Ying has a MA in Chinese Language and Creativity. Born in 1994, in Taipei Taiwan. Is a mixed race of a Taiwan Indigenous tribe “Taroko”. Writer, who also has sideline jobs such as lyricist, composer, and painter. Author of the novel The Halloween Circus series, which won the Ministry of Culture Books From Taiwan, National Arts Association Literature Grant.

Has won over 20 national and global Awards in Poems, Prose, Novels, Short Stories, and Fairy Tales categories. Was invited to be a lecturer at Taipei Poetry Festival and Taitung Poetry Festival. The fairy tale “The Palette of the Death”is included in Chiu Ko’s 105 Years Fairy Tales Selection. The short story “Ointment”was translated into German into the book of History of Taiwanese Literature Zwischen Himmel und Meer.

Author of about thirty works (poetry, essay, prose), Chantal Danjou lives and works in the Var district of Provence after a long Parisian sojourn. She gained her doctorate in 1985 from La Sorbonne on the lonely woman in Colette and Katherine Mansfield. She taught in that field for many years, nowadays supervising at University projects specifically focused on the experience of creative reading and writing. She is, too,director of the editorial board of the journal Décision. Since 1989, she contributes to the field of contemporary poetry and poetics through the organisation La Roue Traversière [The Transverse Wheel] which she co-founded.

Amongst her more recent publications in poetry are, L’ancêtre sans visage, pictorial facing with Ena Lindenbaur, Ed, Collodion, 2016 for the artist’s book / 2017,  for the current edition, La concomitante,Ed. Encres Vives, Colomiers, 2017, L’ombre et l’invisible, with Ena Lindenbaur, Les Cahiers du Museur, coll. A côté, Nice, 2017 and the novels Les Jardins d’Essais, Ed. Orizons, 2017, Journal de la main, Ed. Orizons, 2017, Le souffle du noir, essay about Henri Yéru, Ed. Orizons, 2019, L’Ombre et le ciel Le Ciel et l’ombre, Ed. Orizons, 2021, Chienne de plainte, short stories, Ed. The Menthol House, 2021.  Her website is:http://www.sgdl-auteurs.org/chantal-danjou/index.php/pages/Biographie

Domas (Chinese Name Chien-Lee Yung-Song) was born in 1972, in an indigenous Atayal community Kbuta, Taoyuan County. He holds a master degree of Chinese Literature from the National Taiwan Normal University. Currently Domas is a full-time writer and researcher of Taiwan’s indigenous literature, he is also attending the doctoral program of the National Tsing Hua University. Domas’ literary works are seen in a variety of publications, including the journals of Mountains & Seas Publishing House, National Museum of Taiwan’s Literature, Taiwan Letters, INK Publishing House, Chiuko Books, and Sofukan Publishing House(Japan). Domas is also the grant recipient from the National Culture and Arts Foundation(three times), Kaohsiung Bureau of Cultural Affairs, and Taipei City Bureau of Cultural Affairs. Beside his writing, Domas is an educator and a permaculture farmer. Literary awards Domas has won include the First Prize in Long Fiction, Chung Chao-Cheng Literature Awards(2019), Third Prize in Reportage, Chung Chao-Cheng Literature Awards(2016), Finalist, Taiwan Literature Awards(2013), First Prize in Poem, Taiwan Indigenous Literature Awards(2010), Third Prize in Essay, Lin Jong-San Literature Awards(2008), First Prize in Short Fiction, Teachers Literature Awards from Ministry of Education(2006), First Prize in Long Fiction, Wu Chuo-Liu Literature Awards(2005), among many others.

Robin Hemley has published fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction. His most recent books are the autofiction, Oblivion, An After-Autobiography (Gold Wake, 2022), The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, co-authored with Xu Xi (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood (Nebraska, 2020, Penguin SE Asia, 2021).  He has previously published four collections of short stories, and his stories have been widely anthologized. His widely-used writing text, Turning Life into Fiction, has sold over a hundred thousand copies and has been in print for 25 years. His work has been published and translated widely and he has received such awards as a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, three Pushcart Prizes in both nonfiction and fiction, The Nelson Algren Award for Fiction, The Independent Press Book Award for Memoir, among others. His short stories have been featured several times on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” and his essays and short stories have appeared in such journals as Creative Nonfiction, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and many others. 

He is the Founder of the premier international nonfiction conference, NonfictioNOW and was the director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa for nine years, inaugural director of The Writers’ Centre at Yale-NUS, Singapore, and is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop.  Currently, he is Inaugural Director of the Polk School of Communications at Long Island University-Brooklyn, Director of the MFA in Writing, Parsons Family Chair in Creative Writing, and University Professor. He has had artist residencies at The Bellagio Center at Lake Como, The Bogliasco Foundation, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the MacDowell Colony, and others.