Dawn is a feminist academic researcher and writer who strives to bring the stories of erased or forgotten women and their role in history to centre stage. She called Singapore home for twelve years during which time she made lasting friendships, was a volunteer guide for the city’s museums, began her fiction-writing career and found publication. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and now lives in Perth. She misses many things about the vibrancy of multicultural Singapore, especially the food.
She has published five novels, including The Straits Quartet, four novels set in nineteenth century colonial Singapore (2007-2013); and Finding Maria, a mystery set during Singapore’s post-war race riots (2017) which was shortlisted for the Penang Monthly Literary Prize (2018). Her short stories have featured in anthologies in Southeast Asia and Australia. In 2013 she won the Melbourne Athenaeum Library Short Story Prize. She also writes for stage and screen and won the NexGen Short Film Festival Prize in Perth for her screenplay The Wallpaper.
Amongst other things, she is currently writing a crime/detective series set during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. She is passionate about history and heritage conservation and volunteers with the National Trust of WA.
