A graduate from New York Univeristy – Tisch School of Art, Lai Boon Thye is an animator, 3D and Interactive Media Designer, and Creative Director of Mentalworks Ptd Ltd. He has developed award-winning projects and campaigns for globally-recognised brands and is currently channelling his focus on developing new concepts and stories for film, TV, graphic novels and children’s books. His first book Oolie & Sputnik: The Lost Astro-Cadets is one of the 14 books under the First-Time Writers & Illustrators Publishing Initiative Jointly organised by the National Book Development Council of Singapore and the Media Development Authority.


Lau Siew Mei was born in Singapore in 1968 and migrated to Australia in 1994. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy from the National University of Singapore and also holds a Graduate Diploma in Journalism from Murdoch University, Western Australia. Her short stories have been broadcast internationally on the BBC World Service and published in literary journals in Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Her first novel, Playing Madame Mao, was published in 2000 and shortlisted for the inaugural Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards for Best Emerging Queensland Author. Lau Siew Mei lives in Brisbane and has two children.


A graduate in English Literature, writing is not new to Jin Pyn. Believing strongly in the altruistic purpose of life, writing has become the medium through which she aspires to be the voice of those unable to represent themselves and are particularly vulnerable to exploitation – animals and children. For her love of animals and in recognition of her creative capabilities, Jin Pyn was selected by Animal Planet to learn Natural History Filmmaking. Her first book The Elephant and The Tree is one of the 14 books under the First-Time Writers & Illustrators Publishing Initiative Jointly organised by the National Book Development Council of Singapore and the Media Development Authority.


Born in 1962
Lee studied Economics and Accounting , and holds an MBA in Finance. She is a consultant for the NUS Endowment Fund. She has been a Fellow of the Eisenhower Trust since 2002.

Lee has published three collections of poetry: a single headlamp (2003), fiftythree / zerothree (2004) and y grec [French for the Greek place or the Greek letter; co-authored with Eleanor Wong (see p.20)] for which she wrote 26 poems. A fourth book, synaesthesia, is forthcoming.

Lee s poetry delights in nature, travel, new places and people. She has read her poetry at many literary festivals. She is working with Cake Productions to turn y grec into a literary performance for the 2007 Singapore Writers Festival.


With over 750,000 copies sold, True Singapore Ghost Stories has become a household name since Russell Lee is more famously known as the author of the bestselling Singapore Ghost Stories series, a compilation of reports, stories and interviews about the supernatural. Each book in the series comprises about 50 stories and has popular appeal to both children and mature readers. Russell prefers to keep his identity a secret, appearing in a hood and mask whenever he has to make a public appearance.


Lee Sam Hong writes under the pen name of Chang Fengge. His other pen names include Fang Shu, Fang Ying and Li Feng. He began writing novels and other prose works during his first year at high school, but in recent years his interest has shifted to poetry. He is the author of Holy Trinity, The Biblical Revelation, a book in Chinese on Christian theology.


Aaron has won numerous poetry prizes including the first prize in the National University of Singapore's Literary Society Poetry competition in 1995 and 3rd prize in the nationwide New Straits Times-Shell Poetry Competition in Malaysia in the same year. His first book of poetry A Visitation of Sunlight was selected to be one of 3 books to launch a new publishing label for quality contemporary Singaporean literature, Ethos Books. The collection won a National Book Development Council award in 1997.

A lawyer by profession, Aaron is also involved in theatre and promoting literature in Singapore. In 1999 the title poem of his book was selected for the "Poems on the Move" programme, an initiative by the National Arts Council to bring poetry to the public on mass transit.


Born in 1946
Lee graduated from, and taught at what is now, the National University of Singapore (NUS) until her retirement in 2001.Lee won the NBDCS Award for Poetry in 1982 for Prospect of a Drowning (1980), her debut collection, and in 1992 for both Against the Next Wave (1988) and The Brink of an Amen (1991).

The quest for salvation and fulfillment which emerges after Prospect, may be attributed to her conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1989. Religion, more than changing Singapore landscapes, children s literature or childhood recollections, is both therapy and discovery. The occasional satirical poem aside, Lee s voice is quiet, gentle and earnest.

Lee received the NAC s Cultural Medallion in 1985, and the SEA Write Award in 1987. Lee also wrote Growing Readers (1987), a children s reading guide. In 1996, she received the Gabriela Mistral Award from Chile, and the Mont Blanc-NUS Centre for the Arts Literary Award.


David Leo does not want much of himself to be known except that he has published two volumes of poems, Somewhere a Tiny Voice (1993) and One Journey, Many Rivers (1997), three collections of short stories, Ah...the Fragrance of Durians (1993), The Sins of the Fathers (1993) and Wives, Lovers & Other Women (1995), a novella, Different Strokes (1993) and a book of humour on language, Kiasi, Kiasu You Think What (1995). He was awarded the Publishers Prize for fiction in 1993, a commendation prize for fiction by National Book Development Council in 1994, and a 1995 commendation Literature Prize.


(1947 - ) was born in Penang and received her early education there. A graduate of La Trobe University and the University of Adelaide, she has graduate degrees in Modern English and American Literature from the University of Leicester and George Washington University. She taught at the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore, from 1981 until 2002, when she retired from academic life.

Her papers on Singaporean Literature in English have appeared in various publications including Anglistik: Mitteilungen des Deutschen Anglistenverbandes; World Literature Today; Interlogue: Studies in Singapore Literature, Vol. 2: Poetry (1999), ed. Kirpal Singh; Singaporean Literature in English: A Critical Reader (2002), eds. Mohammad A Quayum and Peter Wicks; Resistance and Reconciliation: Writing in the Commonwealth (2003), eds. Bruce Bennett, Susan Cowan, Jacqueline Lo, Satendra Nandan and Jennifer Webb, and Complicities: Connections and Divisions (see below). Her papers on the Literature of the Pacific War in Malaysia and Singapore have been published, most recently in Altruistic Reveries: Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences (2002), eds. Basant K Kapur and Kim-Chong Chong. Her poems have appeared in publications like Ariel: A Review of International English Literature; Yuan Yang: A Journal of Hong Kong and International Writing; Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings; Commentary: The National University of Singapore Society; No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry (2000), eds. Aaron Lee and Alvin Pang; and Love Gathers All: the Philippines-Singapore Anthology of Love Poetry (2002), eds. Ramón C Sunico, Alfred A Yuson, Aaron Lee and Alvin Pang. She wrote entries on the Pacific War in Southeast Asia and Womens’ Histories in Southeast Asia for A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures in English (2005), eds. Prem Poddar and David Johnson.

She is the author of two collections of poetry, Love is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000); editor of Ee Tiang Hong’s Responsibility and Commitment: The Poetry of Edwin Thumboo (1997), and More than Half the Sky: Creative Writings by Thirty Singaporean Women (1998); and co-editor (with Chitra Sankaran and Rajeev S Patke) of Complicities: Connections and Divisions: Perspectives on Literatures and Cultures of the Asia-Pacific Region (2003). She has read her poems at conferences and literary festivals in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. She recently contributed twenty-four entries on Singaporean Literature in English to the Encyclopedia of Singapore (2006). A member of Singapore’s National Arts Council’s Arts Resource Panel, she is working towards completing Passions, her third collection of poems.


Chinese Poet. Lecturer, Chinese Language Proficiency Centre, National Univ of Singapore. Born 16 Sept 1943, Kuala Kangsar, Perak; married Associate Professor Wong Yoon Wah. Educ: National Taiwan Univ, Taipei (BA Foreign Languages & Literature 1966); Univ of Wisconsin (MA Chinese Literature 1970). Founder member: May Poetry Society, Singapore Association of Writers.
Poetry
Farewell, A Long Farewell, Constellation Poetry Society, Taiwan, 1966
One Man Lane, Constellation Poetry Society, Taiwan, 1969
Poems of Taiji, EPB, 1979 (NBDCS Award for Poetry 1979)
Time Passing Through My Hair, Seven Ocean Publishing House, 1993 (NBDCS Award for Poetry 1994)
Collected Works of Dan Ying, Lu-Jiang Publishing House, Xiamen, 1995

Prizes and awards
1995 Southeast Asia Write Award
1996 Cultural Medallion for Literature
1997 NUS-Montblanc Literary Award


(1923 - ) An acclaimed writer and playwright, Li Lien Fung was born in Shanghai. She had worked as a Straits Times and Lianhe Zao Bao columnist. In addition, she was also the Chairperson of the Singapore Totalisator Board Arts Fund. Her plays include: The Sword Has Two Edges, Times Books International, 1979; A Joss Stick for my Mother, 1986. The latter received the Highly Commended NBDCS Book Awards.


Dr Liang Wern Fook is a writer, composer, lyricist and educator in Chinese language and literature. He is the Language Director of Xue Er You Language Centre and Asst. Professor (Adjunct) with Nanyang Technological University’s Division of Chinese. Dr Liang received gold medal awards both from the National University of Singapore’s Arts and Social Sciences Faculty and the Chinese Studies Department (1988).

He was voted “Most Popular Writer” by local students in a poll organized by Lianhe Zaobao (1990), received the National Arts Council’s first Young Artist Award (1992), and was voted “Person Who Best Represents the Xinyao Spirit” in a 2003 public poll conducted by COMPASS. Liang Wern Fook has over ten publications in various genres of creative writing, and has over two hundred musical compositions and songs to his name.


Liao San is the great granddaughter of Whampoa Hoo Ah Kay. She has published two novels, The Lotus Blossoms in 1991 and China, My Love in 1992. She had also worked as a journalist and Features Editor for the Hong Kong Standard, Hong Kong Tatler, and the now defunct Star newspaper; as well as the Editor-in-chief of Impact.


Agnes Liew enjoyed art and craft classes when she was a young child. Her passion remains even though she has no formal training in drawing or painting. She enjoys simple things in life and she is easily captivated by images, paintings and drawings. She hopes to share this passion, and to captivate children’s imagination with her simple creation. Her first book What I Love Most... is one of the 14 books under the First-Time Writers & Illustrators Publishing Initiative Jointly organised by the National Book Development Council of Singapore and the Media Development Authority.


David Lim, 39, is best known in Singapore for leading the first Singapore Mt Everest Expedition in 1998, which succeeded in placing two members on the summit.

Born in Malaysia, David was educated in Singapore and Britain; graduating in 1987 with a law degree from Magdalene College, Cambridge University.

He has been published in the Himalayan Journal and many regional and national magazines. David is now a major international corporate motivator, educator, hope-giver and newsmaker. He still climbs and leads expeditions to the great mountains worldwide.

Publications
Mountain to Climb: The Quest for Everest and Beyond, Epigram, May 1999 (http://www.mountain.com.sg/ bookindex.htm) Against Giants: The Life and Climbs of a Disabled Mountaineer, Epigram, December 2003.

Business website: www.everestbusiness.com
Expeditions website: www.everest.org.sg


Born in 1963
Lim is a journalist, poet and writer. Lim writes under a number of pen names, such as Mu Han Lin and Han Han. He was a former senior editor with the Lianhe Zaobao newspaper. He is now the publisher of Lingzi Media Pte Ltd. A member of organizations such as the Singapore Association of Writers and the Singapore Chinese Publishers Association, he is a poet with published collections such as Remembering the Little Lantern and Dreaming of Poetry. His poetry won the second prize at the Golden Point Award in 2001 and the first prize in 2003.


Shirley Geok-lin Lim, born in Malacca and now a U.S. based academic, is a distinguished teacher and writer whose works have appeared in journals such as New Literary History, Feminist Studies, Signs, MELUS, ARIEL, New Literatures Review, World Englishes, and American Studies International. She was featured as a PBS special on American poetry, "Fooling with Words" in 1999, and again on the program “Now” in February 2002. Recipient of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, she is also the author of “Among the White Moon Faces” (1996), which received the 1997 American Book Award for non-fiction, of five books of poetry, three volumes of short stories, and two recent novels, Joss and Gold (2001) and Sister Swing (2006). She is currently professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara.


Gerrie Lim is a former Los Angeles music critic who was writing for Billboard, Playboy, L.A. Weekly and L.A. Style when he found himself sidetracked into reporting about the adult entertainment industry in America. He wrote the popular “Cinema Blue” column for Penthouse Variations magazine (under the pseudonym Drew McKenzie) from 1999 to 2002, and then reported on the adult internet industry as the International Correspondent for the trade journal AVN Online.

He is the bestselling author of three previous books: Invisible Trade: High Class Sex for Sale in Singapore (Monsoon Books, 2004), Idol to Icon: The Creation of Celebrity Brands (Cyan Books/Marshall Cavendish, 2005) and Inside the Outsider: A Decade of Shooting the Pop Culture Breeze (BigO Books, 2001). His latest and fourth book, In Lust We Trust (Monsoon Books, 2006), chronicles his ten-year reporting stint for the US$12-billion American adult film industry. Gerrie spends his time between Los Angeles, London and Singapore.


Born 1972. LLB 1996, University of Bristol. Editor of literary magazine Inkling. (short stories) Faith and Lies, Ethos Books, 1999; (co-author) In Search of Words, 1991.


Ka Lim is a Singapore Permanent Resident (PR) and is married with a daughter, Sophie. He has worked in the financial industry in London and New York, and is currently a director in the equity division of a major investment bank in Singapore. His first book, Emily the Duckling Says "Humph!" is one of 14 books under the First-Time Writers & Illustrators Publishing Initiative Jointly organised by the National Book Development Council of Singapore and the Media Development Authority.


Poet Theodore Lim Li, a Singapore citizen of Chinese descent, was born in 1948. He received primary and secondary education at Tiong Bahru Primary School and Raffles Institution respectively, and holds a BA from SU (1972). He is married and works for Mitsubishi Corporation.

He has contributed to Commentry, Singa, The Anthology of Singapore Writing, Journeys, and Voices 4, and with the support of the National Arts Council, Unipress published his collection of poems titled The Secrets of an Eastern Myth.


Aspiring poet. Former lawyer. Now a civil servant. Born 1972. Educated at Singapore Chinese Girls' School, Hwa Chong Junior College, and Exeter College, Oxford University (BA Jurisprudence; Bachelor of Civil Law). Called to the Singapore Bar in 1997.

Publications
Mining for the Light, 1999 (anthology of poems exploring the phenomenon of synesthesia).


Born in 1942
Lim was born in Malaya and moved to Singapore in 1969. With eight collections of short fiction, five novels, one novella, two volumes of verse and other books, Lim is Singapore’s most prolific author of fiction in English. Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore (1978), and Or Else, the Lightning God and Other Stories (1980) which was commended in the 1982 NBDCS awards, draw from traditional settings in Singapore and Malaysia. Other writings include ghost stories and explorations of romantic predicaments. O Singapore! Stories in Celebration (1989) is an unflattering portrait of Singaporeans. Lim s novels feature strong women as protagonists. The Bondmaid (1995) has been translated into eight languages.

The recipient of the SEA Write Award in 1999, Lim was conferred an honorary Doctor of Letters by Murdoch University, Australia, in 2000.In 2003, she was awarded the Chevalier de LOrdre des Arts et Des Lettres by the French government, and in 2005, became an Ambassador for the Hans Christian Andersen Foundation.


Rosemary Lim is from Northern Ireland and has lived in Singapore since 1990. She has a masters in publishing and has recently finished a second masters in writing. In 1998 she was co-winner of the Singapore Literature Prize Merit Award with a book of short stories entitled The Seed from the Tree and the following year was a Commonwealth Short Story Competition Asia-Pacific Winner. She is the editor of So You Think You Can Write A Novel?, a collection of novel excerpts from 19 Singapore writers.


Described as ‘fearless in tackling a multiplicity of voices set against a broad canvas,’ prizewinning author, Suchen Christine Lim, is best known as the inaugural Singapore Literature Prize winner for her third novel, Fistful of Colours, currently used as a Literature text for the ‘A’ Level.

Her fourth novel, A Bit of Earth, was short listed for the same prize in 2004. A co-authored play and a children’s book won Merit Prizes. Her first novel is the groundbreaking Ricebowl which captures the political uncertainty and critical questioning of a group of university students in the 1970s.

In 1997, she was awarded a Fulbright fellowship in the University of Iowa’s International Writers' Program. She has held several writing residencies overseas, including International Writer-in-Residence, University of Iowa. In 2005, she was Writer-in-Residence in Moniack Mhor Writer’s Centre, Scotland.


BBM 1979. Born 19 Oct 1924, Penang; died 12 Feb 1991. Educ: Raffles College (BA English 1951). Life member, Raffles Society. Was Director of Customs and Excise.
Genre/s
Poetry, Short fiction

Publications
Selected Verses, University of Malaya, 1951
Poems 1951-1953
Southward Lies the Fortress, EPB 1971
The Siege of Singapore, EPB, 1971
Destination Singapore: From Shanghai to Singapore, Pan Pacific 1976
The Liberation of Lily and Other Poems, 1976
Pierre, unpublished, 1977
Ricky Star, Pan Pacific, 1978
Fourteen Short Stories, Pan Pacific, 1979
Bits of Paper and Other Short Stories, Pan Pacific 1980
Blues and Carnations, Federal Publications, 1985
Eleven Bizarre Tales, EPB 1990
The Parting Gift and Other Stories, Kefford Press, 1990
Singaporama, EPB, 1991
The Towkay of Produce Street, EPB, 1991
Survival and Other Stories, EPB, 1992


Lin Hsin Hsin speaks, reads and writes in Chinese, English, French and Japanese. She writes poems in both English and French, occasionally in Chinese and Japanese. In 1989 and 1990 she won the Golden Poet Award, World of Poetry Contest in U.S.A. She has published poems in Singapore, U.S.A., Japan and Switzerland. She is a member of the International Writers and Artists, U.S.A.

Besides Singapore, Lin's books have been cataloged in Library of Congress, USA, The British Library, England, libraries in United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and university libraries in USA and England.


Born in 1943
(Pseudonym: Dan Ying) Liu is a poet and a multi-award winning writer. She has won the SEA Write Award (1995), Singapore Cultural Medallion and the Mont blanc- NUS Centre for the Arts Literary Award. She graduated with a Masters in Arts from the University of Wisconsin, US and subsequently worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the National University of Singapore. She is a member of the Singapore Association of Writers and the May Poem League. Her published poetry collections include Broad Road Many Times Over, Single Lane, Poems of Taiji, and Time as Written Upon My Hair, while her published prose collections include Dan Ying Collections.


Loo Kee Pau writes under the pen name of Han Chuan. He emerged as a writer in the late sixties. He is one of the founders of the Island Culture Society which has published a number of collections of poetry. His poems have been collected in anthologies such as Poems in the Fire, and the Footsteps on the Hill. His indicidual collections of poems include The Red Lotus, Under a Short Tree, and The Weather of Trees.


Robin Loon is currently an assistant professor at the Theatre Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He received his PhD from Royal Holloway University of London in 2004. Effectively bilingual in Chinese and English, Robin Loon is conducting research in Asian traditional and modern theatre; Intercultural Performance; Performance, Media & Popular Culture.. Robin Loon has also written for the local and international stage since 1989. Most recently, he provided text for TheatreWorks’ latest production, Geisha (2006), which has been performed in Singapore, the US, Hong Kong and Sweden. He is also currently the head of the TheatreWorks Writers’ Laboratory.


Born in Kuala Lumpur in 1964, the eldest of 5 girls, Marie is married with 2 daughters.

She has been writing since 1986, starting with short stories and poetry for local paper "New Thrill" and later, articles on general topics for "STAR". Her first book - "The Shuttle Caper at Keating" - (unpublished because she considered it too amateurish!) was written when she was 17.

She wrote 3 radio plays for RTM's "Radio Theatre" in the 80's under the names "Marie Gerrina Andrew" or "Gerrina Andrew".

She also wrote the following children's books for Delta Publications Sdn Bhd under the names "Marie Gerrina Andrew" or "Gerrina Andrew" :-

Fiction
Ciku To The Rescue Tickets to the Circus
Si Tempang And The English Dog - Grade 5
The Magic Bells
Little Sasha

Non Fiction
Tickets to the Circus - Grade 5

Her first break came in 1990 when her short story "Bequests of Love", written under the name "Marie Gerrina Louis" won a consolation prize at the NST-Shell Short Story Competition. This story together with the other winning entries have been compiled into a book called "Haunting The Tiger & Other Stories" by Kee Thuan Chye.

She won another consolation prize the next year at the same competition and the story was called "Extenuating Circumstances".

Her first book, "The Road To Chandibole", written under the name "Marie Gerrina Louis", was published by Heinemann Asia, Singapore in 1994 and re-published by SNP Publications Pte Ltd under their Raffles Imprint in 2000.

Her second book "Junos" was published by Heinemann Asia, Singapore in 1995.

Her third book "The Eleventh Finger" was published by SNP Publications Pte Ltd under their Raffles Imprint in 2000. This book was given a honourable mention at this year's regional Commonwealth Prize Competition held in Singapore, as being a "strong contender for Best Novel".

She was also one of the authors whose work was chosen to be written about in Nor Faridah Abdul Manaf and Mohammad A. Quayum's recent collaboration called "Colonial to Global : Malaysian Women's Writing In English 1940s - 1990s".