Archives: Authors

Jov Almero writes from the Philippines. He received a BA in Development Communication from Ateneo de Naga University and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of the Philippines Diliman. His first book, a novel in Tagalog called Isang Dekadang Resty, was published in 2021 by UP Press. It was a finalist for the 22nd Madrigal Gonzales Best First Book Award.

Neri Miranda has been dubbed as ‘Wais Na Misis’ because of her impressive entrepreneurial feats while juggling being a full-time mom and a homemaker-as evidenced by her equally educational and entertaining social media posts. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Baguio, Philippines, and is currently finishing her masters in business administration at the same university.

This awe-inspiring mom of three doesn’t let a minute go to waste. She either spends it learning or earning. If not in front of her laptop researching, you can find her all over the country, personally managing multiple businesses.

Neri has amassed 2.5 million followers. Before becoming a successful entrepreneur, she gained nationwide popularity as the 6th runner-up of a local star-search television show and has starred in many television shows and movies.

Faisal Tehrani (aka Mohd Faizal Musa) is a Malaysian author. He is deemed as a controversial author, as over seven of his works have been banned by Malaysian government. In 2017, The Jakarta Post named him Malaysia’s rebel author. Among his best remembered works are 1515, The Professor, and The Koro Riots.
The Prau with the Silent Soul is one of Tehrani’s celebrated works. First published in 2007, it has received the best novel award in the Special Writing Competition Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Malaysia’s Institute of Language and Literature. In 2024, Tehrani’s screenplay for Maryam Pagi Ke Malam won the Best Original Film at 21st Asian Film Festival in Rome, Italy.

Zawiyah Baba was the former advisor of the Librarians’ Association of Malaysia. She began her career as research librarian at the Ministry of Information Malaysia before moving to the National Library of Malaysia, from where she retired as director-general. Post-retirement, she was appointed principal research fellow at the Institute of the Malay World & Civilization (ATMA), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

She has prolifically translated books and journal articles from and to Malay and English. She passed away in May 2023.

Simon Rowe left the green hills of New Zealand for the big sky country of Australia when he was sixteen years old. At twenty-one, he set out for the world and somehow managed to fund his travels by photographing and writing about them. He has lived in Japan for more than twenty-five years, winning numerous awards for his short fiction and screenplays, including Good Night Papa (2013 Asian Short Screenplay Contest) and Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere (2021 Best Indie Book Award). His stories about Japanese life and culture have appeared in The Paris Review, the New York Times, TIME (Asia), the South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, The Australian, and the Australian Financial Review. He has a black belt in iaido (sword quick-drawing), a passion for sea kayaking, and an itch for adventure he never seems able to scratch.

Mollie Rogers Jean De Dieu is the General Manager of French fashion and accessory company, Longchamp, in Singapore and Malaysia, a keynote speaker, and Founder of Emotional Inclusion®, a non-profit organization where she exercises passionate advocacy for humanizing the workforce.

A seasoned veteran of the people industry, Mollie has listened to and witnessed countless stories of individuals struggling to navigate work while facing the ‘perfect storm’. Over her two-decade-long career, Mollie has grappled with the reality of the subject matter and the urgent need to advocate a safe platform where emotions can be heard, recognized, and dealt with. Today, Mollie champions a new paradigm of corporate leadership with Emotional Inclusion® that requires companies to recognize and care for the humanity of the individuals they lead by investing in tailored, emotionally inclusive medical, mental health pillars.

Mollie’s work-through her organization and its programs-draws on the latest research in positive and behavioral psychology, leadership development, and organizational change. Through her Emotional Inclusion® podcast (available on iTunes/Spotify), Mollie hosts renowned global leaders who are advocates for emotionally inclusive workplaces. She ultimately aims to shatter the archaic business landscape’s status quo by leading the way to a wholesome, new mindset in the workforce.

A self-proclaimed citizen of the world, Mollie grew up between Africa, France, the United States and has made Asia her home for the past seventeen years. She spent nine years in Hong Kong and eight years in Singapore, where she currently resides with her family.

Mukesh Sud, Associate Professor at IIM Ahmedabad, has three decades of professional experience divided between academia and entrepreneurship. An engineer from IIT Delhi, he founded several small-scale industries involved in abrasive blasting and thermal sprayed coatings. Mukesh began his academic career in the US at Augustana College (2006-09), after which he was a tenured faculty member at the Dolan School of Business, Fairfield University (2009-15). Mukesh is a visiting faculty at Ashoka University, Delhi NCR, and the Naropa Fellowship at Leh. At IIM Ahmedabad he conducts executive education programmes on ‘Design Thinking’ and ‘Creating Entrepreneurial Organizations’. He is on FICCI’s Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) Committee.

Priyank Narayan is the Founding Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Ashoka University, a leading liberal arts university. He started his career with IBM. He has been an entrepreneur for many years before joining Ashoka University. Priyank teaches courses on Design Thinking, Innovation Management, and Developing an Entrepreneurial Mindset. He is a guest faculty member at IIT Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad, HEC Paris, and Naropa Fellowship, Leh. An MBA from the Asian Institute of Management, Manila, Priyank has also studied at IIM Ahmedabad. He has completed executive education programmes at Harvard Business School and Singularity University, California. He holds a PhD from the Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) is best known for her Gothic horror story Frankenstein. Born in London in August 1797, Mary Shelley was the only daughter of the philosopher William Godwin and his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, the radical feminist writer. Tragically, her mother died almost immediately and Mary was brought up by her father and his second wife. Finding herself bereft of emotional attention, Mary spent much of her childhood reading, scribbling stories and day-dreaming. She later claimed that her favourite pastime was the ‘formation of castles in the air’ and it was one such waking dream that led to her most famous creation.

CHI PANG-YUAN is an educator, scholar, and author. She is professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at National Taiwan University. She is coeditor of Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey (2000) and The Last of the Whampoa Breed: Stories of the Chinese Diaspora (Columbia, 2003), among other books.