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NTU-NAC Writing Residencies
The Creative Writing Programme at English, with the support of the National Arts Council, offers a number of residencies every year to outstanding writers from Singapore and abroad. Each residency usually runs between four and six months, and can last for up to a year. Writers in Residence undertake light teaching duties (one course per semester), provide one or two public readings each semester, participate in the cultural activities of English, and devote the remaining time to their own writing.
Amanda Lee Koe was the fiction editor of Esquire Singapore, an honorary fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and the youngest winner of the Singapore Literature Prize for the story collection Ministry of Moral Panic. The working manuscript for her debut novel, Delayed Rays of a Star, won the Henfield Prize, awarded to the best work of fiction by a graduating MFA candidate at Columbia University. Born in Singapore, she lives in New York.
John Burnside is a writer of fiction and creative non-fiction, and a prize winning poet, whose collection, Black Cat Bone, won both the T.S. Eliot and the Forward Prizes for 2011. His most recent prose works are I Put a Spell on You, a study of love, glamour and popular music, and A Summer of Drowning, a novel set in the Arctic Circle. His radio play, Coldhaven, was voted the best broadcast play on German radio in 2017. He is a professor of Creative Writing at St Andrews University and writes a regular Nature column for The New Statesman. Burnside is the Nanyang Technological University Creative Writing Resident 2018.
Born in England, poet Judith Beveridge moved with her family to Australia in 1960 and earned a BA at the University of Technology, Sydney. Tender and even affectionate, Beveridge’s poems model the interaction of spirituality, the natural world, and selfhood. She is the author of several poetry collections, including The Domesticity of Giraffes (1987); Accidental Grace (1996), which won the Wesley Michel Wright Award; Wolf Notes (2003), which won the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and the Victorian Premier’s Award; and Storm and Honey (2009). Beveridge edited The Best Australian Poetry 2006 and co-edited, with Jill Jones and Louise Wakeling, A Parachute of Blue: First Choice of Australian Poets (1995). Beveridge’s additional honors include the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal, the Dame Mary Gilmore Award, the New South Wales Premier’s Award, and the Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize. Beveridge served as poetry editor of the literary magazine Meanjin and has taught at Newcastle and Sydney Universities.
For over twenty-five years, Verena Tay has acted, directed and written for local English-language theatre in Singapore, working for companies such as The Necessary Stage, ACTION Theatre, TheatreWorks and Practice Theatre. A storyteller and a presentation skills and creative writing teacher, she has written plays and short stories, as well as edited twelve short story anthologies. Possessing Masters degrees in English Literature, Voice Studies and Creative Writing, she is currently pursuing PhD studies in Creative Writing at Swansea University.
Helen Oyeyemi
Helen Oyeyemi is the author of five novels, including White is for Witching, which won a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award, and Mr Fox, which won a 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2013, and was named one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists the same year. Her story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours was published in 2016.
Tse Hao Guang
Tse Hao Guang was assembled with parts from Hong Kong and Malaysia. His first full-length poetry collection, Deeds of Light (Math Paper Press, 2015), was shortlisted for the 2016 Singapore Literature Prize. He edits UnFree Verse (Ethos Books, 2017), the anthology of Singapore poetry in form; the cross-genre, collaborative journal OF ZOOS; and critical essays for poetry.sg. He
Kirstin Chen
Ms Chen is the author of the novels Bury What We Cannot Take, forthcoming from Little A in 2018, and Soy Sauce for Beginners, a Kindle First selection and an Oprah Magazine pick. A former Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing, she holds an MFA from Emerson College and a BA from Stanford University. She has received awards from Sewanee, Hedgebrook, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Her short stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, Hobart, Pank, and Best New Singaporean Short Stories, among others. Born and raised in Singapore, she lives in San Francisco.
Julian Gough
Mr Gough is a popular Irish novelist. He is the author of three novels, two children's books, two BBC radio plays, a stage play, a book of poetry, and the ending to the world's most successful computer game, Minecraft. He also sang with underground literary pop band Toasted Heretic. He has won the BBC National Short Story Award, and been shortlisted for an Irish Book of the Year Award, a Sainsbury's Children's Book Award, the Davy Byrnes Short Story Award, and, twice, for the Everyman Bollinger Wodehouse Prize. His latest novel, Connect, will be published by Picador in 2018.
Marina Lewycka
Marina Lewycka was born in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, during World War II. She studied at Keele University, and lectured in media studies at Sheffield Hallam University. Her first novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (2005), tells of the exploits of two feuding sisters trying to save their elderly father from a Ukrainian divorcee, Valentina. It won the 2005 Saga Award for Wit, the 2005 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction. Over a million copies were sold in the UK alone. Her subsequent novels are Two Caravans (2007), We Are All Made of Glue (2009), and Various Pets Alive and Dead (2012).
Yu-Mei Balasingamchow
Yu-Mei Balasingamchow is the co-author of Singapore: A Biography (2009), and co-editor of the literary collection, In Transit: An Anthology from Singapore on Airports and Air Travel (2016). Her short fiction has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, selected for the Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories, and published in the UK, US and Singapore.
In 2015, Yu-Mei was an honorary fellow in writing at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She is currently working on a novel. She is also an independent writer, editor and curator for history, art and culture museums and other institutions in Singapore. Her website is http://www.toomanythoughts.org.
Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker is an NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (International) for 2016. He was born in New York City in 1957 and grew up in Rochester. An accomplished bassoonist, he studied for a year at the Eastman School of Music, before transferring to Haverford College where he graduated with a degree in English. After brief stints as a research analyst, word processing operator and technical writer, he became an author with the publication of his first novel, The Mezzanine (1988). He has written nine novels including House of Holes (2011), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and four works of nonfiction, including Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (2001), which won a National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The New York Review of Books. He lives in Maine with his family.
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé is an NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (National) for 2016. A former entertainment journalist with 8 Days magazine, he studied sociology and mass communications at the National University of Singapore, and received an MA in theology (world religions) from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of an epistolary novel, Singular Acts of Endearment (2014); a hybrid work, Babel Via Negativa (2015); and five poetry collections. Trained in book publishing at Stanford University, he also helms Squircle Line Press as its publisher and founding editor. Desmond has won numerous awards for his writing, including for Poetry and Visionary Fiction at the Beverly Hills International Book Awards, for Poetry at the National Indie Excellence Book Awards, and Metaphysical (Bronze) and Inspirational Fiction (Silver) at the Living Now Book Awards.
Pooja Nansi
Pooja Nansi is a poet who believes in the power that performance can lend to the written word. She has published two collections of poetry: Stiletto Scars (2007) and Love is an Empty Barstool (2013). She has also co-edited a poetry anthology, co-authored a teacher’s resource for Singaporean poetry, and performed and conducted workshops in Singapore and abroad. Since April 2013, she has been curating a monthly spoken word and poetry event called Speakeasy at Artistry, which has showcased both emerging and established poets from places as diverse as Burma and Botswana. She also runs the Singapore chapter of Burn After Reading, a collective started for young emerging poets (aged 16-24) who are encouraged to write, read, perform and publish as widely as possible. Since 2009, she has also been one half of the spoken word and music duo The Mango Dollies along with singer-songwriter Anjana Srinivasan. She is an NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (National) for 2015-2016.
Yeo Wei Wei
Yeo Wei Wei read English at the University of York and completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked at the National Gallery Singapore as Deputy Director of International Programmes, Publications and Resource Centre. She was previously a lecturer at the National University of Singapore and the head of the English literature department at School of the Arts. Her published work includes short stories in journals and anthologies, essays on literature and cultural studies, a children’s picture book and translations of Chinese poetry. Her first collection of short stories, These Foolish Things & Other Stories, will be published by Ethos Books later this year. She is an NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (National) for 2015.
Madeleine Thien
Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1974. Her father immigrated to Canada from Malaysia while her mother is originally from Hong Kong. Thien’s first book, a collection of short stories titled Simple Recipes (2001), won the City of Vancouver Book Award, the VanCity Book Prize and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Her debut novel, Certainty (2006) won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Ovid Festival Prize, and was a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction. Dogs at the Perimeter (2011), her second novel, won the 2015 LiBeraturpreis, awarded by the Frankfurt Book Fair and recognizing works of fiction from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. It was also a finalist for the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the 2014 International Literature Award - Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Her short story, “The Wedding Cake”, was shortlisted for the 2015 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the richest prize in the world for a single short story. She is an NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (International) for 2015.
Githa Hariharan
Githa Hariharan was born in Coimbatore, India, grew up in Bombay and Manila, and is now based in New Delhi. Her first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night (1992), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best first book in 1993. Her other novels include The Ghosts of Vasu Master (1994), When Dreams Travel (1999), In Times of Siege (2003), and Fugitive Histories (2009). A collection of short stories, The Art of Dying, was published in 1993, and a book of stories for children, The Winning Team, in 2004. Her latest book is a collection of essays, Almost Home: Cities and Other Places (HarperCollins India, 2014). She is an NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (International) for 2015.
Miguel Syjuco
Miguel Syjuco’s debut novel, Ilustrado, won the Man Asian Literary Prize and will be translated into more than 15 languages. Before coming to NTU as Writer-in-Residence, he was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard. The literary editor of the Manila Review, Miguel is a member of the Folio Prize Academy. His upcoming novel, I was the President’s Mistress!!, follows its female protagonist as she rises to the top of a fictional society based on the Philippines. He is an NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (International) for 2014-2015.
George Szirtes
George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to England as a refugee in 1956. His poems began appearing in national magazines in 1973 and his first book, The Slant Door, was published in 1979. It won the Faber Memorial prize the following year. Since then, he has published several books and won various other prizes including the T S Eliot Prize for Reel in 2005. He has also worked extensively as a translator of poems, novels, plays and essays and has won various prizes and awards in this sphere. He is an NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (International) for November 2014.
Boey Kim Cheng
Kim Cheng Boey is one of Singapore’s post-1965 English language poets whose lyrical writings explore thematical images of homeland, identity, nostalgia, and exile. After reading English Literature at the National University of Singapore, Boey pursued German Studies in Murnau and attended the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1994. Two years later, he moved to Australia with his wife, where he completed his PhD at the University of Macquarie. His debut collection, Somewhere-Bound (1989), won the National Book Development Council’s Book Award for Poetry; Another Place (1992) received the commendation award, while Days Of No Name (1995) was awarded a merit at the Singapore Literature Prize. His most recent collection is After the Fire (2006). A recipient of the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award, he teaches creative writing at the University of Newcastle in Australia. Giramondo published his book of personal essays, Between Stations.
Romesh Gunasekera
Romesh Gunesekera’s first book, Monkfish Moon, a collection of short stories reflecting the ethnic and political tensions that have threatened Sri Lanka since independence in 1948, was published in 1992. His novel Reef was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His other publications include The Match, Heaven's Edge, and The Sandglass. He lives in London and travels widely for festivals and workshops. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Asia House Festival of Asian Literature.
Balli Kaur Jaswal
Balli Kaur Jaswal grew up in Singapore, Japan, Russia and the Philippines. She attended university in the United States and in Australia. In 2007, she won the David TK Wong Fellowship at the University of East Anglia, where she wrote Inheritance, her first novel. She was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist for 2014.
Yong Shu Hoong
Yong Shu Hoong holds a Computer Science degree from the National University of Singapore and an MBA from Texas A&M University at College Station. He has published six collections of poetry to date: Isaac (1997), Isaac Revisited (2001), dowhile (2002), frottage (2005), From within the marrow (2010) and The Viewing Party (2013). He has won the Singapore Literature Prize twice, in 2006 and 2014. He is the founder of subTEXT, a series of monthly literary readings which ran from 2001 to 2008, and which is now held on an ad-hoc basis. He is also the coordinator of the National Arts Council’s Mentor Access Project. Yong currently works as a freelance writer and his articles have appeared in newspapers such as The Straits Times and My Paper.
Tash Aw
Born in Taipei to Malaysian parents, Tash Aw grew up in Kuala Lumpur. He is the author of three novels, which have been translated into twenty three languages. As a literary reviewer, his work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times. His novel Five Star Billionaire was published in March 2013 and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His previous novels are Map of the Invisible World (2009) and The Harmony Silk Factory (2005). He has been awarded the O Henry Prize 2013, the Whitbread Prize (Best First Novel) 2006, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Best First Novel, Asia-Pacific Region) 2006, and was longlisted for the IMPAC Prize 2007, the Man Booker Prize 2005 and the Guardian First Book Prize 2005. Tash was the NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (International) from January to May 2013. From 2014 he joins our teaching faculty for six months of each year.
Jean Tay
Jean Tay is the author of more than ten plays, which have been staged in Singapore, the US, the UK and Europe. Two of her plays, Boom and Everything but the Brain, have been published by Epigram Books, and are currently used as GCE ‘O’ and ‘N’ level Literature texts. She has been the winner of the Golden Point Short Story Competition, the Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards, and Perishable Theatre’s Annual Women’s Playwriting Festival Award. She also attended the International Playwriting Residency at the Royal Court Theatre, London in 2007. Jean was Playwright-in-Residence at Singapore Repertory Theatre from 2006-2009, and has developed and helmed SRT's Young Company Writing Programme since 2012. With Dave Chua, she was the NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (National) for 2012-2013.
Dave Chua
Dave Chua's first novel, Gone Case, received a Singapore Literature Prize Commendation Award in 1996. Gone Case: A Graphic Novel, Book 1 and Book 2 with the artist Koh Hong Teng were recently published. Chua's latest book, The Beating and Other Stories, was longlisted for the 2012 Frank O'Connor International Short Story prize and shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. With Jean Tay, he was the NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (National) for 2012-2013.
Grace Chia
Grace Chia is the author of two poetry collections, womango and Cordelia (shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize), and two non-fiction books. Her poetry and short stories have been published in Singapore, the US, Australia, Germany, France, and Serbia. She has been invited as guest writer to literary festivals such as the Singapore Writers’ Festival, Austin International Poetry Festival in the US, Queensland Poetry Festival in Brisbane, Australia and National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle, Australia. A recipient of many awards from the Singapore International Foundation and National Arts Council, she was the NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (National) for 2011-2012. Grace is also a veteran journalist, having worked for both print and online media for over a decade. She is at the moment working on completing a novel.
Timothy O’Grady
Timothy O’Grady was born in Chicago and has lived in Ireland, London, Spain and Poland. He is the author of three works of non-fiction and three novels. His novel Motherland won the David Higham award for the best first novel in 1989. His novel I Could Read the Sky, a collaboration with photographer Steve Pyke, won the Encore Award for best second novel of 1997. I Could Read the Sky was filmed and also travelled as a stage show. His most recent novel is Light, published in 2004. His non-fiction books are Curious Journey: An Oral History of Ireland’s Unfinished Revolution, On Golf and Divine Magnetic Lands, an account of a return journey to the United States after thirty years of living in Europe, published in 2008. His books have appeared in translation in Germany, Holland, France and Poland. He has worked in radio as a writer and producer, in theatre and film as an actor, and his fiction, essays and journalism have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including The Times, The Sunday Times, the Guardian, the Observer and CondeNast Traveller. He was awarded a fellowship at the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas in 2009-10 and has taught fiction writing at Yale, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He was the NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (International) for 2012.
Suchen Christine Lim
Suchen Christine Lim, winner of the South East Asian Writers Award for 2012 and the inaugural Singapore Literature Prize, was the NTU-NAC Writer in Residence (National) in 2011. She is the author of THE LIES THAT BUILD A MARRIAGE, Stories of the Unsung, Unsaid and Uncelebrated in Singapore, Fistful of Colours (awarded the Singapore Literature Prize), A Bit of Earth (shortlisted for the same prize), Gift From The Gods, and Rice Bowl. She has also written non-fiction, for the theatre, and several children’s books which are currently used in schools. A Fulbright Fellow in the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, she has held several writing residencies in the US, Australia, Scotland, Korea and the Philippines.