Ann Ang

Ann Ang is a poet, fiction-writer and literary researcher. Her poetry has appeared in QLRS, Softblow, the California Quarterly and the Jakarta Post, and was set to music by experimental music composition group Quinnuance as well as performed at the Omni-theatre at the Singapore Science Centre. She is the editor of three literary anthologies: SingPoWriMo: the Anthology 2014, Poetry Moves and Food Republic. A featured author at the Singapore Writers Festival in 2012 and 2016, Ann is also the coordinating editor of the newly launched PR&TA journal of creative praxis in Southeast Asia.

Ann is best known as the author of Bang My Car (2012), Singapore’s first collection of short stories to be written in Singlish and English. Many of the collection’s tales are in the voice of Uncle, the archetypal persona of an older man in Singapore, described in “Uncle (N.)” as a type who “wants face” and is unlikely to “give you face”, whether he is sitting in the MRT with his legs apart or in the lounge of the Shangri-la, un-smiling with his gold rolex”. Despite Uncle’s confrontational Singlish monologues, where his usual answer to all your questions is “nothing”, he surprises everyone as a loving grandfather. Bang My Car also reinvents classic prose forms from the ghost story to the university admissions essay, and excerpts from the collection have been reprinted in Union: 15 Years of Drunken Boat, 50 Years of Writing from Singapore, and the Epigram Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories.