Archives: Authors

Malaysia-born and Singapore-based, Daryl Kho works in the regional TV industry, where he basically sells other people’s stories and ideas for a living.

He was a prolific creator during his student days: composing songs, poems, plays and even a kung-fu musical! However, after Daryl joined the rat race, corporate emails became his sole literary output. Gradually, his creative tank dried up.

Then in 2009 – shortly before the birth of Daryl’s only child, Alexis – Daryl’s father was felled by two strokes, which also caused vascular dementia. The strokes took away his dad’s mobility and independence, whilst dementia robbed him of many of his memories and much of his personality. Both Daryl and his sister live abroad. So, Daryl’s mum – a finance professional – had to assume the additional burden of being her husband’s primary (and often only) caregiver.

Deeply affected by his dad’s illness, Daryl was equally moved by his mother’s otherworldly love, superhuman strength and unswerving devotion to her husband. All this, combined with guilt and an immense regret that Alexis and her Grandpa never got to truly “meet” each other before the mists moved into his mind, rekindled Daryl’s long-buried itch to put pen to paper.

This was how his debut “family novel”, Mist-Bound: How to Glue Back Grandpa, was born. The story was also a chance for Alexis to have an adventure with her Grandma, since they live in different countries and rarely see each other.

Sadly, Daryl’s father’s condition continued to decline. He passed away before the book could be completed and read to him. Subsequently, Daryl nearly abandoned the project, but finally decided to see it through. For Daryl, each time that a child reads the story is a chance for Grandpa to be “saved”, over and over, and over again.

In terms of past works, one of Daryl’s short stories that was written as a high school student in Ontario, Canada, was published in INCITE, an annual anthology featuring the best student works from the province. That same year, Daryl was also awarded the Reginald A. Finney Award for Proficiency in Senior English. At his alma mater, the University of Chicago, his plays and kung-fu performances (all co-written, co-directed and co-acted with his landlord, no less!) were the highlight and backbone of the annual Chinese New Year Shows that were performed to paying audiences of close to a thousand.

Idayu Maarof graduated with an M.D. from the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia medical school. She then served in several hospitals before starting her own general practice. Her interest in health care through patient education has resulted in her writing for magazines and her personal blog on healthcare issues such as how patients can make the best use of the medical infrastructure to their
maximum benefit.
Dr Idayu Maarof is passionate about empowering the public with the knowledge to better enable them to cope with their health issues, believing that doctors should also teach and help patients manage their health, especially to prevent the onset of disease. She has given lectures and talks on a diverse range of healthcare issues, medical education and public engagement through medical writing. Her
first book, The Doctor is Sick, won an Anugerah Buku Negara (National Book Award, Malaysia) in 2017.

Mohd Firdaus Raih is a bioinformatician and computational biologist by profession. He has published numerous research papers in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in books of high standing in the scientific community. He has also written widely on science and technology as well as higher-education issues in various newspapers and magazines.

Nidhi Upadhyay is the bestselling author of That Night and I Hear You, and in her spare time—if you squint hard enough—you might find her as an engineer and headhunter. But her greatest interests are her children, her husband—who is disillusioned that her writing career is his retirement plan, and a puppy who thinks he owns her. She is often found hiding her current search history from her boys. If not busy researching a way to kill, drown or dispose of bodies, Nidhi can be found reading thrillers or screaming at her children.

Chris Mabey is an Emeritus Professor of Leadership at Middlesex University Business School and became a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society in 2002.
He has held a career-long interest in how organizations develop their leaders. More recently his research and writing have turned to leading ethical leadership and the enigma of cultural leadership in Myanmar. He recently led an ESRC-funded Seminar Series on Ethical Leadership: Philosophical and Spiritual Approaches.
Chris has 11 academic books to his name (and 20 or more refereed papers), each subject to critical peer-review. One text he authored in Human Resource Management has sales of 21,500 to date.

Danny Jalil majored in Multimedia Arts and studied Creative Writing and Screenwriting at LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts, during which time he wrote numerous short stories and film scripts.
His short film comedy “Spun” was nominated the merit prize at the National University of Singapore Student’s Union (NUSSU) Inter-Tertiary Video Festival.
He has also written movie reviews and conducted interviews for First Magazine and has had his works published in Singapore’s Greatest Comics (Nice One Entertainment) and ACTOR (A Commitment To Our Roots).
His novel The Machine Boy was a winner of NAC’s Beyond Words: Young and Younger Award and published by Straits Times Press and he has also written the graphic novel Lieutenant Adnan and The Last Regiment, illustrated by artist Zaki Ragman, published by Asiapac Books.

Elaine Chan
Elaine has been a journalist for more than two decades, covering Asia and China’s phenomenal rise, writing for the likes of South China Morning Post, Bloomberg News and the Associated Press. She began her journalism
career in Hong Kong, arriving in the city the same day as the last British governor of the then colonial city. In the year that Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule, she relocated to Shanghai to work for Knight-Ridder Financial and Bloomberg, serving as the latter’s first Asian bureau chief.

While growing up in her native Singapore, she trained in Western art and painting, but realising she’d never be a Van Gogh decided to pursue journalism to write stories that would help the underdogs and right some of
society’s wrongs.

In 2009, Elaine moved into public relations, specialising in M&A and capital market transaction communications, working on some of the region’s biggest cross-border deals. But she returned to her bigger passion – journalism, which she believes is the society’s conscience – in 2017, and is currently a senior
editor at the South China Morning Post.

Keeping a sense of adventure and humour is what keeps her going. She continues to paint occasionally, and harbours hope of one day hosting a mini exhibition of her works.

Elaine has an MA in Social Science.

Lee Jeong-ho
Jeong-ho has been a journalist covering Asia and China for South China Morning Post, and News1 Korea. He believes media exists for the progression of democracy, to empower individual citizens of democratic ideals via the spreading of information. Media that fails to serve this purpose becomes an
institution for propaganda, he believes.

Jeong-ho grew up in South Korea and Australia. He had also worked as an officer for the South Korean Air Force, before he became a journalist – preparing analytical reports and papers on sensitive and high-profile matters of concern to North Korean politics and human rights issues. He solidified the value of democracy and the danger authoritarianism during his service, and
decided to pursue journalism to protect democratic ideals and freedom of individuals.

He is a PhD student in politics at King’s College London. He has a master’s degree of international studies in Chinese area studies from Seoul National University, and a bachelor’s degree in media and communications and Chinese studies from Sydney University.

Gary Lai is an economist whose writing has appeared in the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), the Daily Caller (USA), the Toronto Star, and the Daily Monitor (Uganda), among other publications, on topics ranging from Aboriginal employment in British Columbia to girls’ education in Hong Kong.
Gary’s interest in poverty issues led him to found the anti-poverty campaign TKO Poverty at Columbia University in 2005. Gary received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Southern California and a Master of Economics from the University of Hong Kong. He also attended the University of British Columbia Allard School of Law and Columbia University. Lai was shortlisted for a Chevening Scholarship and was nominated for a JCI Hong Kong Ten Outstanding Young Persons Award in 2016.

Nabeel Ismeer builds solar power plants across Asia during the day.
He spends his nights writing, centred around the question ‘What if?’. What if the stone age had a Leonardo Da Vinci, was Lascaux her Mona Lisa? What if prehistoric leaders resorted to discrimination when they had no answer to the ice age? What if mitigating climate change can also help reverse inequality and further humanity?
His writings, which include themes of climate change and inequality, have been published in print and online magazines.
The Hunter’s Walk is his first book.

Ram Anand is a published writer, filmmaker, and a former journalist based in Malaysia. He had also spent over eight years writing for various news publications in Malaysia- namely Malaysiakini, The Malaysian Insider, The Malay Mail. He periodically writes opinion pieces in The Malay Mail after leaving journalism in 2018.
He recently finished a Masters in Directing Film and Television at Bournemouth University, United Kingdom, and has written and directed three short films to date, two in United Kingdom, and another in India. His Tamil language short film made in India, Andhi, is currently being previewed at several film festivals across India.