Archives: Authors

Quan Manh Ha is a professor of American Literature & Ethnic Studies at the University of Montana. His research interests include multiethnic US literature, Vietnam War literature, critical race theory, and literary translation. He is the translator of Other Moons: Vietnamese Stories of the American War and Its Aftermath (Columbia University Press, 2020), Luminous Nights: Pioneering Vietnamese Short Stories (La Frémillerie, France, 2021), and Hanoi at Midnight: Stories by Bao Ninh (Texas Tech University Press, 2022). He believes that literary translation is a political and ethical act. Thus besides publishing several scholarly articles and essays in journals, he is committed to translating Vietnamese literature to promote cross-cultural understanding and global discourse on colonialism, imperialism, and the Vietnam War from all sides of the conflict. His short-story translations have appeared in various journals, including Metamorphoses, Southern Humanities Review, Asian Literature and Translation, CIRQUE: A Literary Journal for Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, and DELOS.

James Chai is a writer, researcher, and political analyst. His work has been cited internationally by outlets such as CNN, Bloomberg, Washington Post, NBC, Reuters, The Diplomat, Nikkei Asia, South China Morning Post, Business Times, The Straits Times, Phoenix Weekly, The Paper, Taiwan News and others. As columnist for MalaysiaKini and Sin Chew Daily, Malaysia’s largest English and Mandarin news sites respectively, he has written over 250 articles on Malaysia. He is also a regular guest on TV and radio, internationally for media such as Channel News Asia, NPR, Al Jazeera, WION News India; and locally to Astro Awani, Astro AEC, and BFM. During his time as a Visiting Fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, he has also published papers on Malaysia youths’ political inclinations and the structure of political parties in Malaysia. He is also the author of two book chapters on Malaysia’s fourteenth and fifteenth general elections for the same institution.

He holds a graduate degree from the University of Oxford (Best Student) and a first-class law degree from Queen Mary, University of London. He also graduated top of class in the Malaysian legal qualification exam.

Above all, he believes that the most important thing in life is to do interesting things.

H Y Poon is a civil servant living in Singapore. In a few decades of service, he has held various appointments government agencies working in an eclectic mix of areas such as manpower policy formulation, finance, investment promotion, enterprise development, and biodiversity conservation.

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.