Speakers and Moderators
Find out more about our speakers this year by navigating the tabs below!
Chan Cheow Thia is assistant professor of Chinese studies at the National University of Singapore. As a literary translator and editor, he has worked with Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine.
Chen Si'an is a playwright, theatre director, short story writer, and literary translator. She is the founder and artistic director of the Sound and Fury Play Reading Festival. She has written four collections of short stories and five plays. Her plays were performed at the Royal Court Theatre, Edinburgh International Festival, National Theatre Company of China, Taiwan, Beijing International Fringe Festival, etc.
Chua Sok Koon was interviewed by Lianhe Zaobao and invited to write short stories for publication in their literary column Wenyi Cheng in 2016 and in 2017, her short story won Lianhe Zaobao's "Literary Work of the Year". In 2020, she won the Jury Prize in Taiwan’s "Liang Shiqiu Translation Competition". She is in the process of translating Balli Kaur Jaswal's Sugarbread into Chinese.
Gopika Jadeja is a bilingual poet and translator, writing in English and Gujarati. Her literary writing and translations have been published widely. Gopika is committed to translating writing from marginalised communities and is working on a project of English translations of Dalit and Adivasi poetry from western India. She is Editor at Large for Wasafiri: International Contemporary Writing and Editor for PR&TA: Practice Research and Tangential Activities.
Jeremy Tiang is the translator of over thirty books from Chinese, by authors including Yeng Pway Ngon, Hai Fan, Zhang Yueran, Yan Ge and Lo Yi-Chin. His novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize. He also writes and translates plays.
Shanna Tan is a Singaporean translator working from Korean, Chinese and Japanese into English. Her translation of the Korean bestseller Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum is forthcoming with Bloomsbury in Oct 2023. She is also translating a Korean bestselling novel for Penguin Random House, and a Singaporean Chinese title for City Book Room.
Shelly Bryant divides her year between Shanghai and Singapore, working as a poet, writer, and translator. She is a published author and has translated work from the Chinese for Penguin Books, Epigram Publishing, the National Library Board in Singapore, Giramondo Books, HSRC, and Rinchen Books, and edited poetry anthologies for Alban Lake and Celestial Books. Her translation of Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012, and her translation of You Jin's In Time, Out of Place was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2016.
Susan Xu Yun is the Head of Translation and Interpretation programmes and Associate Professor at the School of Humanities and Behavioural Sciences, Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS). Susan is involved in developing the Bachelor of Arts in Translation and Interpretation and Graduate Diploma in Translation and Technology, the first and only programme of its type in Singapore. She is a member of the Chinese Resource Panel for National Translation Committee, Singapore.
Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma is an author, translator, teacher, and performer. His translation of the classical Tamil masterpiece The Kural: Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural, was recently published by Beacon Press. Other books include The Safety of Edges (poems) and Give, Eat, and Live: Poems of Avvaiyar (translated from the Tamil). He speaks and performs widely, teaches, and has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the U. S. Fulbright Program.
Photo: David Mielke
Yeow Kai Chai has three poetry collections: Secret Manta (2001); Pretend I’m Not Here (2006); and One to the Dark Tower Comes (2020), which received the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize. He co-wrote three books, including Lilla Torg (2023). A QLRS co-editor, he was Festival Director of Singapore Writers Festival (2015-2018).
Alvin Pang, PhD, is a Singaporean poet and editor whose writings have been translated into more than twenty languages worldwide, including Swedish, Macedonian and Chinese. He is a 2022 Dublin Literary Award judge, Civitella Ranieri Fellow and Adjunct Professor of RMIT University. His recent books include Uninterrupted time (2019), Det som ger oss våra namn (2022), and the latest work, Diaphanous (2023), co-authored with T.S. Eliot Prize winner George Szirtes.
Ang Jin Yong is born in 1991 and is the current editor for TrendLit Publishing. He has published his poetry collection Medical Records in 2021, and has edited numerous anthologies and works including Never Before—50 Essential Poems, A Long Walk, The Gentle Art of Teaching etc.
Anitha Devi Pillai has authored and edited creative and non-creative fiction books as well as translated the historical fiction novel, Sembawang: A Novel (2020) by Kamaladevi Aravindan, from Tamil into English. Anitha also loves writing poetry and her work explores themes such as identity, heritage, and culture. Anitha is fluent in English, Tamil and speaks Malayalam.
Daryl Lim Wei Jie is a poet, editor and translator from Singapore. His latest collection of poetry, Anything but Human, was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. His latest book is The Second Link, which brings together writers from Singapore and Malaysia to reflect creatively on the relationship between the two nations.
Ho Zhi Hui is a translator, writer and teacher. She did her undergraduate degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University and her MA in Translation and Interpretation at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. Her dissertation, which focuses on translating M40 by Singapore writer Chia Joo Ming, won the Han Suyin Prize. She is particularly interested in how translation, literature and language serve as vectors of power and how globalisation has allowed languages to cross-pollinate each other.
Ian Chung graduated from the Warwick Writing Programme. His writing has appeared in Axon: Creative Explorations, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Sabotage Reviews, the SingPoWriMo anthologies, The Cadaverine (where he was also Prose Editor), Unthology No. 3, and the《一首诗的时间》anthologies.