Speakers and Moderators
Find out more about our speakers this year by navigating the tabs below!
Alfian Sa’at is a Resident Playwright with Wild Rice. His published works include three collections of poetry, ‘One Fierce Hour’, ‘A History of Amnesia’ and ‘The Invisible Manuscript’, a collection of short stories, ‘Corridor’, a collection of flash fiction, ‘Malay Sketches’, three collections of plays as well as the published plays ‘Cooling Off Day’ and ‘Hotel’. He has also translated the novels “The Tower” by Isa Kamari and “The Widower” by Mohamed Latiff Mohamed.
Brian Gothong Tan is a Singaporean creative director, filmmaker, and multimedia artist renowned for translating complex literary and historical narratives into striking visual languages. A six-time Life! Theatre Award winner—most recently for A Thousand Stitches (2026)—his eclectic work seamlessly bridges film, stage, and installation art. As the artistic director for T:>Atelier and the Creative Director for the 2024 and 2026 National Day Parades, he continually explores the dynamic intersection of text, culture, and visual storytelling.
Christina Ng is a Singaporean writer, journalist and translator based in Berlin. Working between English and Chinese, she has interpreted for film and theatre productions, as well as written and translated essays, interviews and features on art, travel, and culture. Her Chinese to English literary translations include poetry by Singaporean poets Dan Ying, Pan Shou and Liang Wern Fook.
Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and literary translator working in Kannada and English. She was the first Indian translator to win the International Booker Prize in 2025. Her essays, columns and journalism have been published extensively in Indian and international publications, anthologies and visual art book projects. She is the author of a children’s book titled Champi and the Fig Tree. Deepa’s published book-length translations from Kannada include works by Kota Shivarama Karanth, Kodagina Gouramma and Banu Mushtaq. She was a National Book Critics Circle Awards finalist, and is a recipient of an EnglishPEN Award.
Gene Png is an award-winning literary translator based in Singapore. She was awarded the Grand Prize in Poetry at the 53rd The Korea Times’ Translation Awards, and was the National Centre for Writing’s Korean Prose Mentee in 2023 Her full-length book translations include Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo’s bestselling memoir, Two Women Living Together, Esther Park’s romantasy The Legend of Lady Byeoksa and Park Seolyeon’s STEMinist mecha fantasy Project V. She is interested in books that champion girl power, empathy, and whimsy.
Grace Lee Khoo is the Founder of Access Path Productions, Singapore’s first disability-led theatre company. An international director, producer, performer, audio describer and creative access consultant, she specializes in inclusive arts education and accessibility advocate. Grace serves as Lead Artist for the Inclusive Young Company and lectures at NAFA. Previously an artist-in residence at London’s Graeae Theatre Company, her work spans major institutions like Esplanade, National Gallery Singapore, National Museum Singapore, Southbank Centre London, ICAF Rotterdam to name a few. She also hosted CNA’s The New Hire and The Assembly.
Izyanti Asa’ari is a writer and co-founder of Fellow Design. Her works have appeared in anthologies This is Not a Safety Barrier (Ethos Books, 2016), to let the light in (SingLit Station, 2021), New Singapore Poetries (Gaudy Books, 2022), The Opening Act (Layl Ash-Shayr, 2024) and others. She is interested in studying the gestures the body makes against its own will, including that of cities.
Joanna is a creative captions designer and arts manager. As a captions designer, she adopts the ‘aesthetics of access’ approach to integrate captions into the design and aesthetic of live performances, enabling the Hearing and Deaf communities to enjoy live performances together. Her recent works include And the Cats Dance by the Light (2024) by Intercultural Theatre Institute, SmartyPants and the Swordfish (2024) by ART:DIS and Open the Curtains (2023) by SRT’s Inclusive Young Company. Additionally, since 2022, Joanna has been a part of the Singapore Drama Educators Association.
Lily Goh is a Deaf artist, educator, and founder of ExtraOrdinary Horizons, a Deaf-led learning platform promoting Singapore Sign Language (SgSL). An internationally recognised advocate for Deaf arts-music, and visual storytelling, she has presented at the WASLI Asia Conference 2025, SDEA Theatre Arts Conference 2025, and Clin d’Oeil Festival 2026. Lily is the recipient of the Singapore Woman Award (2024) and the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World Humanitarian and/or Voluntary Leadership Award (2017).
Shanna Tan is a Singaporean literary translator working from Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and occasionally, Thai, into English. She has translated more than ten Korean bestselling titles, including Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum and the feminist thriller Plant Lady by Minyoung Kang. This year, she’s thrilled to be putting out translations from three languages, including the English edition of her all-time favourite novel: Café. Waiting. Love by Giddens Ko (九把刀) from Taiwan. She enjoys self-learning languages.
Alecia Neo is an artist and cultural worker. Her socially engaged art practice unfolds primarily through photography, video installations and participatory workshops that address modes of radical hospitality and care. She is the co-founder of Brack, an art collective and platform for socially engaged art and the Ubah Rumah Residency on Nikoi Island, Bintan, which focuses on the intersection of art, hospitality and ecology. Active since 2014, her ongoing collaborations with disabled individuals and communities manifest as an arts platform, Unseen Art Initiatives.She is a member of the Green Art Lab Alliance (GALA) Asia and co-curated the third edition of the Listening Biennial in 2025.
Dr Anitha Devi Pillai is an applied linguist, author, translator, and Assistant Dean at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She translated Sembawang: A Novel from Tamil into English, which was shortlisted for the NUS Singapore History Prize and the Best Literary Work Prize. Her new short story collection, What the Tongue Remembers, published by Penguin, explores language, migration, memory, food, and the lives of Malayalee women in Singapore.
Melissa Gay is a Masters by Research candidate in English Literature at the National University of Singapore on the Margaret Wang Memorial Scholarship. She is working on a thesis on Anglophone and Sinophone literary criticism in mid-twentieth century Malaya and Singapore. Born and raised in Singapore, her research interests are in world literature, comparative literature, literary criticism, literary translation, the intersection between public and private reading, institutional and disciplinary history, and post-critique.
Tse Hao Guang (謝皓光) is the author of The International Left-Hand Calligraphy Association and White Dust From Mongolia. He edited the new edition of Windham-Campbell prize-winning poet Wong May’s 1969 debut, A Bad Girl’s Book of Animals, and anthologies Food Republic and UnFree Verse. He co-edits lit journals AMOK (print) and OF ZOOS (online), and runs a tiny pamphlet press called Paper Jam. His poems and essays appear in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The Yale Review, F I V E S and elsewhere.
