Archives: Authors

Born Mumtaz Ali in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, Sri M is a spiritual guide, social reformer and educationist. He heads the Satsang Foundation. In 2011, he wrote his memoir, Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master: A Yogi’s Autobiography, which became an instant bestseller; the sequel, The Journey Continues, was published in 2017.

O Thiam Chin is the author of three novels and six collections of short fiction. His debut novel, Now That It’s Over, won the inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize in 2015. His work has appeared in Granta, The Cincinnati Review, Manoa, The Brooklyn Rail, QLRS, World Literature Today and elsewhere.

Josephine V. Roque is a freelance journalist and editor. She has worked in print and online publications in Manila and Shanghai. Joyce obtained her MFA in creative writing from De La Salle University and has received prizes for her essays from the Doreen Fernandez Food Writing Competition and Ateneo Art Awards. She also contributes art criticism and profiles for ArtAsiaPacific Magazine and ArtReview Asia.

Tutu Dutta lives in Kuala Lumpur; she was born in India but grew up in Malaysia. She has a BSc from Universiti Putra Malaysia and an MPhil from the University of Malaya. As an undergraduate, she won a scholarship from Japan Airlines, to attend Summer School at Sophia University in Tokyo, an eye-opening experience which instilled in her a love for folklore. She has also studied at the University of Strasbourg, France.
Dutta started writing children’s books when she lived in far flung cities as the spouse of a diplomat, including: Singapore, Lagos, New York, Havana and Zagreb. She has a daughter, Shona Yean, who was born in Singapore in 1992. Shona is her informant on youth and popular culture and keeps her abreast of international trends; Shona qualified as a Barrister at Middle Temple Inn (UK) in 2017.
To date, Tutu Dutta has authored nine books, including Timeless Tales of Malaysia, Eight Treasures of the Dragon, and the middle grade duology, The Jugra Chronicles, a story set in 17th Century Borneo. Phoenix Song is her first picture book; published by Lantana Publishing (UK) and illustrated by Martina Peluso. It is also her first book, to be translated into Malay, and was published by Oyez! in 2017.
In 2016, Marshall Cavendish decided to publish a new edition of Timeless Tales of Malaysia, entitled The Magic Urn and Other Timeless Tales of Malaysia. This was followed by Nights of the Dark Moon, a collection of dark folktales from Asia and Africa, in 2017. It was reprinted in 2019 and garnered renewed interest and positive media reviews in Malaysia and India.
In 2019, an anthology she co-edited with Sharifah Aishah Osman, entitled The Principal Girl: Feminist Tales from Asia, was published by GB Gerakbudaya Enterprise Sdn Bhd, a publisher known for social activism. This book was a surprise hit with YA readers and received wide media coverage and reviews.
She was invited as a speaker at the Asian Festival of Children’s Content in Singapore, twice. The first in 2013, where she presented a paper entitled Adapting Asian Folktales for Children’s and YA Literature, and in 2017 she presented two papers, Folklore Finesse and Hidden Elements. She was also one of the speakers at a panel of Malaysian authors during the East-West Conference organized by the University of Malaya in 2017.
Tutu Dutta was also one of the judges for the Scholastic Asia Young Writers Award 2014, representing Malaysia. Her stories are rooted in Asian culture and reflect the research she had put into the subject. Readers and reviewers have also pointed out the feminist leanings and the deep reverence for nature, in her stories. In fact, Timeless Tales of Malaysia, inspired a group of children to produce a video about it and was the subject of a Master’s Degree in English Literature at the University of Malaya.
She is active in local literary circles and is a Committee Member of the Malaysian Writers Society, helmed by Tina Isaac and Gina Yap, since its inception in 2017; and also a member and Patron of The Classic Challengers, a readers and writers collective, helmed by Nazli Anim Ghazali and Vickneswaran Manickasagar.

Danton Remoto was educated at Ateneo de Manila University, Rutgers University, University of Stirling and the University of the Philippines. He has worked as a publishing director at Ateneo, head of communications at United Nations Development Programme, TV and radio host at TV5 and Radyo 5, president of Manila Times College and, most recently, as head of school and professor of English at the University of Nottingham Malaysia. He has published a baker’s dozen of books in English. His work is cited in The Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Literature, The Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Poetics, and The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Postcolonial Literature.

Jame DiBiasio is the author of The Story of Angkor, which was published by Silkworm Books in 2013, and was also an extensively researched history for tourists. He has also published two novels: Gaijin Cowgirl (Crime Wave Press, 2013) and Bloody Paradise (Water Street Crime, 2016). Jame has been living in Asia since 1997. He is an award-winning financial journalist and the founding editor of AsianInvestor.

John Wigglesworth is a British national who has been based in Asia for the past ten years. He currently lives in Bangkok.

Raissa Falgui’s fiction has been published in various anthologies: “The Sorceress Queen” in Alternative Alamat, “Dreaming of the Sea” in Of Words and Water 2014, and “Light in the Water” in Likhaan 8. Her stories have also appeared in The Philippine Graphic, including “In the Dark Zone” which was a third prize winner of their 1999 contest. She has also published a young adult historical novel, Woman in a Frame, which was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Awards and winner of the 2013 Filipino Readers’ Choice Award for fiction. Her other published books are children’s picture books: Hating Kapatid, Bilangan sa Karagatan, and A Boy of Buhi. She is a graduate of the University of the Philippines with a BA in Art Studies and an MA in Creative Writing.

Vanessa Barros was born in Paris to a Portuguese actor and a French teacher. She was raised in Portugal and France. She started travelling by herself at the age of sixteen in the US and throughout Brazil the following year. She never stopped exploring the world ever since.
She graduated with a master of science in Management from ESSEC Business School and embarked on an international advertising career for the next twenty years. She ran local, regional and global accounts at Saatchi & Saatchi, McCann-Erickson, Havas, BETC and Ogilvy, working for prestigious clients including Reckitt Benckiser, Nina Ricci, Procter & Gamble, Lolita Lempicka, Danone, Kraft Foods Peugeot and Unilever. She worked on four continents (north America, south America, Europe, Central Asia and Asia), speaks four languages fluently and has gained solid experience in multi-cultural management, team leadership, operations and business development.
Vanessa completed her PhD in cultural intelligence with the Center for Leadership and Cultural Intelligence at the Nanyang Business School (Nanyang Technological University) under the supervision of Professor Ang Soon. Her research focuses on the strategies adopted by senior international executives to manage intercultural conflicts effectively.
Vanessa Barros shares her time between research, education and consulting around the world whilst raising her three sons.

Aubrey Menard lived in Mongolia as a Luce Scholar from 2015 to 2016. She’s worked on democracy and governance issues in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, Central America, and the United States.
Aubrey is an expert on political transitions, elections, and democracy. She’s been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Politico, the South China Morning Post, and more. Aubrey earned an MPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford and a Bachelor’s degree from Smith College. She is a Critical Language Scholar (Russian) and a Truman National Security Project Fellow. Young Mongols is her first book.
Learn more at aubreymenard.com.