Archives: Authors

Robin Hemley (Robinhemley.com) was born in New York to a literary family. His parents were both writers and publishers and translators of the Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer. He grew up in the Midwestern U.S. and studied as a high school student in Osaka, Japan. At Indiana University, he majored in Comparative Literature and also studied Japanese and other subjects in the East Asian Languages and Culture Department. He received his MFA at The Iowa Writers Workshop in the 1980’s. Since then, he has been a professor at a number of universities, including The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Western Washington University, St. Lawrence University, where he was then inaugural Viebranz Chair in Creative Writing, The University of Utah, The University of Iowa, where he directed the Nonfiction Writing Program for 9 years, Vermont College of Fine Arts, where he was Faculty Chair, and most recently at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, where he was the inaugural Director of the Writers’ Centre and where he is currently Professor of Humanities and Writer-in-Residence. He frequently gives writing workshops around the world. He is likewise a Professor Emeritus at the University of Iowa and Distinguished Visiting Faculty at RMIT University in Melbourne.
He has published fourteen books of fiction and nonfiction and his work has been published in many of the leading journals in the U.S. as well as in the U.K. Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Singapore, The Philippines, China, Iceland, and Ukraine. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation as well as the Rockefeller Foundation, three Pushcart Prizes in both nonfiction and fiction, The Independent Press Book Award, The Nelson Algren Award for Fiction, an Editor’s Choice Award from The American Library Association, the Governor’s Award from the State of Washington, and many others. He has been a Fellow at the Bellagio Center for the Arts at Lake Como, Italy, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The MacDowell Colony, Varuna Writers Centre, The Bogliasco Foundation, The Hermitage, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and many others. He is the Founder and past President of NonfictioNOW, the leading international conference for literary nonfiction. He is a Contributing Editor of The Iowa Review, and Fourth Genre and with the writer Xu Xi, he organizes writing retreats and workshops through Authors at Large (AAlauthors.com).

Rudolf Beger is a German national, is a former chairman of trend-setting conferences at Management Centre Europe (Brussels) and Zentrum für Unternehmensführung (Zurich) and a speaker at industry conferences (Financial Times, UK Celebrity Speakers, pp). Rudolf wrote standard-setting books on corporate communication (in German (Gabler Verlag, 1989), and in English: Present-Day Corporate Communication, www.springer.com, 2018); he is also the author of a romantic novel entitled Dreisam, published by Fouquet’s Literatur-Verlag (out of business), 2003 (currently translated into English for publication). In 2020, Rudolf will complete a highly topical 450-pages political thriller entitled The Lobbyist on the automotive industry (for publication). Rudolf wrote numerous articles, papers and White Papers on EU industrial policy, and was a writer for German antique magazines. His artistic works were shown in ca. 40 solo- and group exhibitions all over the world. In 2011, he won the 1st Prize for his artistic work by the Monaco State Ministry/UNESCO.

Saraphun Wongngernyuang is a Thai national, is an enthusiastic lifelong learner about happiness. She has experience in the practice of Buddhism and Christianity since her youth and continues to learn about the philosophy of happiness from various sources, including New Age, Taoism, Zen Buddhism and Confucius. For seven years she has been studying and training the subject of happiness at the Institute for the Study of Human Happiness
(Happy Science). Occasionally she speaks on the topics of self-development and happiness in public lectures and seminars organized by the Institute, namely “Tips for Happiness”, “Creating the Best Couple Relationships”, “Zen Self-Reflection” and “The Noble Eightfold Path”. In 2019 she translated a self-help book entitled Tips to Find Happiness by the Japanese author Ryuho Okawa, IRH Press Publisher, from English into Thai. She writes and has editorial experience with culinary and restaurant reviews on a restaurant review website Top25restaurants (www.top25restaurants.com/bangkok). Sara published an academic research paper on the preservation of Western (Portuguese) Catholicism in Thailand, entitled “The Virgin Mary in the Encounter of Cultures: Preserving Transcultural Heritage in the Immaculate Conception Community, Bangkok”, published in a book entitled Preserving Transcultural Heritage: Your Way or My Way, Caleidoscópio, University of Lisbon, Portugal (2018).

HRH PRINCESS VIBHAVA DIRANGSIT NÉE PRINCESS VIBHAVADI RAJANI is a Thai writer and a member of the Thai royal family well known for her fiction writing and her developmental work in rural Thailand.

Nilanjana Sengupta, an author based in Singapore. Her publications include, A Gentleman’s Word: The Legacy of Subhas Chandra Bose in Southeast Asia (ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2012), The Female Voice of Myanmar: Khin Myo Chit to Aung San Suu Kyi (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Singapore, My Country: Biography of M Bala Subramanion (World Scientific Press, 2016) and The Votive Pen: Writings on Edwin Thumboo (Penguin Random House, 2020). Sengupta also writes for The Straits Times and for publications of the National Heritage Board, Singapore. Her books have been critically acclaimed, adopted for university courses and translated into multiple languages. She has been associated with the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute as well as NUS in various research capacities.

Paul Callan is the author of three previous historical novels. The Dulang Washer was published by MPH of Malaysia in 2012, and was long-listed for the IMPAC award (Malaysia Tatler wrote: “[It] kept me engrossed for seven hours straight.”). Shadows beneath the Fronds was published by MPH in 2013 (Book Review: “A very good book that tells the reality of the lives of the Tamils in [Malaysia]”). Epigram Books published his third novel, The Brigadier’s Daughter, in July 2017. (Malaysia Tatler described it as “The Book of Love.”)

RM Topacio-Aplaon is a novelist from Imus, Cavite, Philippines. He has published two novels in Filipino under the University of the Philippines Press. The first one, Lila ang Kulay ng Pamamaalam (loosely, Lilac is the Colour of Farewell), published in 2015, was shortlisted for the National Book Awards and the Madrigal-Gonzales First Book Award. It also earned a runner-up citation from the Gawad Gintong Aklat by the Book Development Association of the Philippines. His second novel, Muling Nanghaharana ang Dapithapon (Dusk Serenades Again) was published in 2018. Both comprise the Imus Novels, a septology centered on Topacio-Aplaon’s hometown. The five remaining books will be published by the same press, with Topograpiya ng Lumbay (Topography of Grief) set to be released this year. He attended the University of the Philippines National Writers Workshop in 2016 and served as panelist at the Philippine Readers and Writers Festival in 2015 and 2018. He has taken part in promoting local literature to students of writing. Alguien ya contó las horas (Somebody has already told the time), a collection of short stories, essays, and poems in English, was published in 2018 by Balangay Productions, an independent press based in Cavite. Topacio-Aplaon currently works for a global sustainability-adherent company based in Manila. He was also a painter and an amateur musician. At Night We Are Dancers is his first English-language novel.

Josh Langley has spent the last seventeen years in radio as an advertising copywriter and
has been nominated and won several state, national and international copywriting
awards.

Danielle Lim is an award-winning author whose latest novel, All Our Brave, Earthly Scars, has been published in 2022. Her short story collection, And Softly Go the Crossings, won the Book of the Year as well as Best Literary Work in the Singapore Book Awards 2021. Her novel, Trafalgar Sunrise, was shortlisted for Best Literary Work in the Singapore Book Awards 2019. Her memoir, The Sound of SCH: A Mental Breakdown, a Life Journey, won the Singapore Literature Prize 2016 (non-fiction), and has been translated to Chinese and Tamil, published in Taiwan and India.

The Publishers Weekly (US) listed Danielle as one of Singapore’s top writers in 2016. Her works have been featured in The Straits Times, BiblioAsia, on radio 938Now and ABC Radio Australia, in The West Australian and other publications. She has been invited to speak at international events such as the Singapore Writers Festival, the Kimberley Writers Festival, and the George Town Literary Festival.

Danielle is an alumna of the University of Oxford and resides in Singapore, where she is a lecturer.

D Turmunkh is a programme director with Mongolian TV, scriptwriter, producer
and founder of the independent production company Tobch Toli Prods. His movie,
State of Dogs, released in 1998, received numerous international awards. He has
since released two more movies to complete the trilogy.