Archives: Authors

Brought up in Dagenham, London, England, Humphreys migrated to Singapore in 1996, left for Australia in 2006, and returned to Singapore in 2011. He worked as a humour columnist, first at TODAY and then The Straits Times and The New Paper. Humphreys continues to write for newspapers, magazines, and websites in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Australia, and the UK. His humour, football and lifestyle columns have appeared in FourFourTwo, Esquire, The New Paper, The Age, The Straits Times, and TODAY. He is now radio host for Money FM 89.3 hosts an award-winning football podcast.

By 2001, he was one of the country’s bestselling authors. His first book, Notes from an even Smaller Island, became an immediate bestseller and travelled across Southeast Asia, Australia, and Britain. The book appeared on the Singapore bestseller list for over four years. BBC World said it was ‘a warts and all view of the city-state and celebrates many of the things most often criticised’. In 2003, his second book, Scribbles from the Same Island, a compilation of his popular humour columns in WEEKEND TODAY, was launched in Singapore and Malaysia and also became an immediate bestseller. In 2006, Final Notes from a Great Island: A Farewell Tour of Singapore completed the trilogy. The book went straight to No.1 and decided to stay there for a few months. Humphreys has since written 32 books.

Humphreys is currently working on an Abbie Rose and the Magic Suitcase TV series and his Inspector Low crime novels are also being developed for TV.

Alex Fergnani is an atypical professor, writer, executive educator, youtuber, and proud enthusiast of Asia. He obtained his Ph.D. in Management and Organization at NUS Business School in Singapore, his Master’s in Futures Studies at Tamkang University in Taipei, and his Bachelor of Asian Languages, Markets and Cultures at the University of Bologna in Italy. Thanks to his prolific intellectual contributions, he was awarded numerous awards, including the President fellowship by the Singapore government, the Fetzer scholarship by the Academy of Management, and an honorary research fellowship by Strathclyde Business School.

Matthew Oey is an Associate Editor at Tuttle Publishing, part of Periplus Publishing Group. Previously, he was a Research Assistant at Columbia’s Graduate School of International and Public Affairs, where he worked with Professor Stuart Gottlieb and U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. Matthew was the lead organizer of the ‘Reimagining Southeast Asian History’ conference at the Asian Civilisations Museum, held on August 23, 2023. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in History summa cum laude from Columbia University and is a Juris Doctor candidate at Harvard Law School.

Aaron is a five-time author and the host of Asia’s No. 1 Purpose Podcast. His works include The Asian Dad, Reborn Digital, Unstuck, Transformative Thoughts, and The Transformative Journal. Recognized with the Australia China Alumni Award for Arts and Creative Industry, Aaron has inspired tens of thousands of professionals to cultivate a positive mindset for personal, career, and business growth.

He has trained leading organizations, including the Bank of Singapore, LVMH, and Robert Walters. With experience as a Business and Digital Advisor at Microsoft and in the Big Four, Aaron also served as Managing Director of a $10 billion tech company and was one of the youngest executives leading digital transformation at the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Remarkably, he generated his first million dollars in revenue through e-commerce and digital marketing at age 22 and increased gross profits by 200 times at his first job.

Aaron’s journey into writing and spreading positivity was instigated by a personal crisis involving his son in 2019. Throughout his life, he was blessed with personal and professional challenges, including dark thoughts as a teenager, facial paralysis at age 20, a forced resignation during an illness at age 32, and a harrowing experience at age 35 when his son nearly died in his arms, accompanied by dad guilt.

Aaron shares the mindset and strategies he employed to overcome these obstacles. Aaron believes that getting stuck is a powerful reminder that we’ve outgrown our current path. This mantra reflects his philosophy of embracing challenges as opportunities for growth and transformation.

Lily Low is a Malaysian who writes on the internet with the goal of encouraging an openness with one’s emotions. With her interest in psychology, her passion for people and overall well-being deeply influence her written work. She was previously a guest contributor for Thought Catalog. Her works have also been published in Revolutionaries’ anthology Through the darkness, I will love myself and Overachiever Magazine. Aside from freelance writing, she has also written reflection and research pieces for a mental health organization.

When she’s not writing (or daydreaming about it), she can be found reading or watching talent shows. She is an avid enjoyer of tea, both sipping and spilling it (literally, she can be clumsy).

Lyn R. Lee, an influential figure in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) space, brings a wealth of experience and a uniquely Asian perspective to her debut book, Tiny Rice Grains.

She was the first Asian woman to be appointed as Shell’s Global Chief DEI Officer (from 2018 to 2024).

Her approach is rooted in courage, curiosity, and care, three principles that have enabled the integration of DEI as a core part of the organization’s identity.

Her experience and insights are widely sought, including by internationally renowned publications such as Bloomberg, Channel News Asia, The Straits Times, Her World and was also inducted into the Robb Report Thought Leaders community in 2024.

Under Lyn’s excellent leadership and vision, Shell has received numerous prestigious awards in DEI, including Cannes Corporate Media and TV awards and EVCOM Clarion GOLD award for DEI engagement strategy; Brandon Hall DEI GOLD awards for Best Advance in Leadership Development for Women and Best Use of AI to Improve DEI and Belonging Programmes.

She also serves as the chairwoman of the board of advisors for the School of Humanities & Interdisciplinary Studies at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore.

Tiny Rice Grains offers an intimate glimpse into Lyn’s journey, weaving together personal anecdotes, insights, and reflections on the global DEI landscape through an Asian lens. She also brings in other people’s stories and perspectives, widening the conversation and giving readers a chance to learn from a collective wisdom far greater than hers alone.

Tiny Rice Grains is an essential read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of DEI and the power of inclusive leadership.

S.W. Jaafar is a versatile Malaysian film and TV producer-turned-author. She gained recognition in the horror genre with her cult-status breakthrough film, Aku Haus Darah Mu (I Thirst for Your Blood). Jaafar continued her work in horror by producing television dramas and creating a macabre travel show. Inspired by her husband’s encounter with a shaman, she authored The Shaman’s Circle.

Before she began writing books and producing for television and cinema, Jaafar worked as a radio announcer for the now-defunct Red FM and as a freelance newsreader for Radio Television Malaysia.

Dawn Cher made waves in 2014 when her saving habits went viral in Asia from her very first published blog article, “How I Saved $20,000 in a Year”. Since then, her content and tips have helped her readers clear their debts, earn more and invest better to secure their own version of financial freedom.

Today, Budget Babe is Singapore’s most-respected financial influencer online and is frequently engaged as a speaker for corporate workshops and conferences on how to manage one’s money better.

Dawn has been featured by the Singapore government for her cost-saving hacks and has worked with various stock exchanges to teach about investing helped her to achieve financial freedom.

She currently lives in the world’s most expensive city (Singapore) and enjoys spending time with her family and two children.

Alberta Natasia Adji is a Chinese-Indonesian writer from Surabaya, East Java, who currently lives in Perth, Western Australia. Before coming to Australia, she has published two novels in Indonesian language, Youth Adagio (2013), which is a young adult romance fiction, and Dante: The Faery and the Wizard (2014), a young adult fantasy fiction, a few short stories of coming-of-age genres in Jawa Pos, an Indonesian national daily newspaper based in Surabaya.

After coming to Australia, she continued to pursue her academic interests and successfully completed her PhD in creative writing from Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, in 2023. The Longing is her main component of her doctoral project and her first novel to be published in English. She was awarded the 2023 School of Arts and Humanities Research Medal by ECU for the quality of her doctoral research thesis. Two edited excerpts of The Longing have appeared in Meniscus and New Writing. She has also published her short fiction works in The in/completeness of human experience (Special Issue of TEXT-Journal of Writing and Writing Courses), which was later published as The Incompleteness Book (2020, Recent Work Press), and The Incompleteness Book II: Writing Back & Thinking Forward (2021, Recent Work Press) as well as refereed articles in various academic journals.

In 2024, she published an academic book, Women Vloggers, Cultures & Nature: Narrativising Rural Lifescape, by Palgrave Macmillan. She enjoys food, detective novels, lengthy fantasy stories, nature walks and Studio Ghibli movies. Connect with her on Instagram: @albertanatasia

Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 in Shropshire, England. He was educated at Edinburgh University and Christ’s College, Cambridge. Between 1831 and 1836 he travelled in South America aboard the H.M.S Beagle to explore the geology and natural history of the area, and published his journal of findings in 1839. His most famous book On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, appeared in 1859 and is arguably one of the most important scientific works ever published. The theories of evolution and natural selection proposed in this book and The Descent of Man (1871) are still the subject of intense debate and scrutiny today. Charles Darwin died on 19 April, 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.