Archives: Authors

Nadia Ayesha is a MA Creative Writing student at LASALLE College of the Arts. She currently teaches English composition at an enrichment centre.
From her years of working in the non-profit sector, she learnt the value and meaning in every individual’s life story and was inspired to return to writing, her first love as a child. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, reading, dabbling in art and watching football.

Hong Shin Quek is a Singaporean freelance author and illustrator whose works include picture books like The Amazing Sarong, The Brilliant Oil Lamp and Universe of Feelings. The Incredible Basket, was the winner of Best Children’s Book at the 2019 Singapore Book Awards. He is also the illustrator for other children’s titles like The One and Only Inuka and the Ahoy, Navy! series that was published in celebration of the Republic of Singapore Navy’s 50th Anniversary in 2017.

I.S.A. Crisostomo-Lopez is a writer based in Binan City, Philippines. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Communication Arts from the University of the Philippines Los Baños in 1996 and her Master’s degree in Creative Writing from De La Salle University Manila in 2003. She is married with four children.

She has published several works of fiction including Passage, which was anthologized in Hoard of Thunder 2: Philippine Short Stories in English by UP Press. She has also written storybooks for children, Si Lola Apura at si Lolo Un Momento published by Adarna House and Ang Bisikleta ni Kyla, a volunteer book project published by Philam Foundation.

Her latest work is a science fiction trilogy, the Driftland series, written for young adult readers.

Jeffrey Say is an art historian specialising in Singapore and Southeast Asian art history. Jeffrey has been instrumental in the development of art history studies at LASALLE College of the Arts, supporting artists to develop a contextual and historical understanding of the evolution of visual arts. In 2009, he designed the world’s first Master’s programme focusing on Asian modern and contemporary art histories. Jeffrey is a public advocate of the importance of art history to Singapore. He is a frequent public speaker at museums, universities and galleries, and conducts short courses which remain hugely popular among various publics. Jeffrey is also a regular commentator on the local visual arts scene. An author of numerous essays on art, his seminal co-edited work Histories, Practices, Interventions: A Reader in Singapore Contemporary Art (2016) remains a critical anthology for researchers, curators and students on Singapore art to date.

Amado Vera Hernandez, commonly known as Amado V. Hernandez was a Filipino writer and labor leader who was known for his criticism of social injustices in the Philippines and was later imprisoned for his involvement in the communist movement. He was the central figure in a landmark legal case that took thirteen years to settle.
His writings gained the attention of Tagalog literati and some of his stories and poems were included in anthologies, such as Clodualdo del Mundo’s Parolang Ginto and Alejandro Abadilla’s Talaang Bughaw.
In 1922, at the age of nineteen, Hernandez became a member of the literary society Aklatang Bayan which included noted Tagalog writers Lope K. Santos and Jose Corazon de Jesus.
Hernandez joined the resistance movement when the Japanese invaded in the Philippines in 1941. He was an intelligence operative of the guerilla outfit of Marking and Anderson, whose operations covered Bulacan and the Sierra Madre mountains, throughout the Second World War.
After the war, President Sergio Osmena appointed him councilor of Manila during the reconstruction of the war-devastated city. He also became president of the defunct Philippine Newspaper Guild in coordination with its editor in chief, Narjeey Larasa.
But his most significant activities after the war involved organizing labor unions across the country through the labor federation Congress of Labor Organizations (CLO). Influenced by the philosophy of Marx he advocated revolution as a means of change. On May 5, 1947, he led the biggest labor strike to hit Manila at that time. The following year, he became president of the CLO and led another massive labor demonstration on 1 May 1948.
In 1950, the Philippine military started a crackdown against the communist movement, which was had sparked open rebellion in some areas on Luzon island, and the CLO headquarters was raided on 20 January 1951. Hernandez was arrested on 26 January on the suspicion that he was among the leaders of the rebellion.
But the authorities could not find evidence to charge him. For six months, he was transferred from one military camp to another and it took nearly a year before he was indicted on a charge of rebellion with murder, arson and robbery – a complex crime unheard of in Philippine legal history.
It was while he was imprisoned that he wrote his most notable works. He wrote Isang Dipang Langit (A Stretch of Heaven), which later won a Republic Cultural Heritage Award, and Bayang Malaya (Free Nation), which later won a Balagtas Award. Also written in prison was his masterpiece Luha ng Buwaya (Tears of the Crocodile). Portions of his novel Mga Ibong Mandaragit (Birds of Prey) was also written while he was at the New Bilibid Prison. He also edited the prison’s newspaper Muntinglupa Courier.
After five years of imprisonment, the Supreme Court allowed Hernandez to post bail on 20 June 1956. He then resumed his journalistic career and wrote a column for the Tagalog tabloid Taliba. He would later be conferred awards in prestigious literary contests, like the Commonwealth Literary Contest (twice), Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards (four times) and journalism awards given by the National Press Club of the Philippines (four times).
On 30 May 1964, the Supreme Court acquitted Hernandez in a decision that would be a landmark in Philippine jurisprudence. The case People of the Philippines vs. Amado V. Hernandez is now a standard case study in Philippine law schools.
Hernandez continued to write and teach after his acquittal. He was teaching at the University of the Philippines when he died on 24 March 1970. The University of the Philippines posthumously conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Humanities honoris causa. The Ateneo de Manila University awarded him its first Tanglaw ng Lahi award. He was posthumously honored as National Artist for Literature in 1973. Together with poet José García Villa, Hernández was the first to receive the title in literature.

Danton Remoto has translated five novels, including Banaag at Sikat (Radiance and Sunrise), the monumental novel in Tagalog published by Lope K. Santos in 1906. He has taught Creative Writing and Literature at Rutgers University, University of Nottingham and Ateneo de Manila University. He has also worked as host of a daily TV show and a daily radio show in the Philippines and has been writing a widely-followed column called ‘Lodestar’ in the Philippine Star in the last 20 years. He has published a well-received novel called Riverrun, as well as a book of stories, three books of poems and six books of essays. He has received awards from the Asian Scholarship Foundation, British Council, and Fulbright Foundation. He was a Fellow at the Cambridge Conference on Contemporary Literature at Downing College, Cambridge University, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College, Vermont. His body of work is cited in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, and The Routledge International Encyclopedia of Literature.

Shivaji Das is the author of four critically acclaimed travel, art and business books. He was the first prize winner for Time Magazine‘s Sub-Continental Drift Essay contest and shortlisted for Fair Australia Prize for Short Stories.
Shivaji has been actively involved in migrant issues and is the conceptualizer and organizer for the acclaimed Migrant Worker and Refugee Poetry Contests in Singapore, Malaysia and Kenya and is the founder and director of the Global Migrant Festival.
Shivaji’s work and his interviews have been featured on BBC, CNBC, The Economist, Travel Radio Australia, Around the World TV, etc. Shivaji’s writings have been published in magazines such as TIME, South China Morning Post, Think China, Asian Geographic, Jakarta Post, Conscious Magazine, PanaJournal, Freethinker, etc.

Shivaji Das was born and brought up in the north-eastern province of Assam in India. Shivaji is a graduate from IIT Delhi and has an MBA from IIM Calcutta. He works as the Managing Director-APAC for Frost & Sullivan, a research and consulting company. Shivaji is currently a Singapore citizen.

Yolanda Yu is a multi-time winner of the Golden Point Award. Her book Neighbor’s Luck, a collection of short stories was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Award 2020. Yolanda’s work has been featured on LianHeZaoBao, Cha Journal, New York Times Travel, Zuopin Magazine, and Guangxi Literature Magazine. Her story ‘The Twelfth Man’ has been adapted for a film, while her story ‘The Missing Clock’ is a recommended read for O-Level students by Singapore’s Ministry of Education, collected in the anthology How We Live Now.
Yolanda is a co-organizer of the Singapore Migrant Worker Poetry Contest and Global Migrant Festival, also an event host and coordinator for outreach for the Chinese migrant worker community. Born in North-Eastern China, Yolanda came to Singapore on scholarship in 1998 and has been living there since then. She holds a Computer Science degree from the National University of Singapore and an MBA from INSEAD Business School. After her twenty years of corporate career, Yolanda is now an Executive Coach for career and leadership development.

Max Lane has been engaged with Indonesia for over 50 years. In the 1970s, he translated W.S. Rendra’s play The Struggle of the Naga Tribe, which was performed in English in Australia and Malaysia. He spent time with Rendra’s group, Bengkel Teater. In the 1980s, he worked in the Australian Embassy in Jakarta when he started translating Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s This Earth of Mankind and its three sequels, together now known as the Buru Quartet. He was withdrawn from the Embassy by the Australian government for translating these banned books. He later translated Pramoedya’s novel, Arok Dedes and historical work, The Chinese in Indonesia. Upon returning to Australia, he helped found the Inside Indonesia magazine and became its first editor. In the 1990s, he actively supported the democracy movements in Indonesia and East Timor and as a journalist wrote hundreds of articles about Indonesia. He has written several books on Indonesia, including Unfinished Nation: Indonesia Before and After Suharto, Catastrophe in Indonesia, An Introduction to the Politics of the Indonesian Union Movement and Indonesia and Not, Poems and Otherwise: Anecdotes Scattered.

Some have been published in Indonesian alongside other original writings. He has lectured at the University of Sydney and Victoria University and at universities in Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States. He has been a research fellow at Murdoch University, the National University of Singapore, and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies-Yusof Isak Institute, also in Singapore. He is married to Indonesian playwright and theatre producer, Faiza Mardzoeki.