Archives: Authors

Emily Brontë (1818-48). Best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, and a collection of surviving poems, she remains one of the most intensely original and passionate voices in English literature. Emily Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, in 1818 and moved to Haworth when her father was made perpetual curate there. The following year her mother, Maria Branwell, died, leaving five daughters and a son who were looked after by their mother’s sister Elizabeth.
Emily’s two eldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died in childhood, following a stay at Cowan Bridge School, the model for Lowood in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. To amuse themselves the Brontë children created fantasy worlds based on reading from a wide range of sources. Emily and Anne created Gondal, an imaginary kingdom for which they wrote annals and journals, which unfortunately have not survived. Emily briefly attended the school at Cowan Bridge, but was wretched and homesick for Haworth and the Yorkshire moors, and returned home after only three months. She became a governess in Halifax but planned with Charlotte to set up a school at Haworth, and together they went to the Pensionnate Heger in Brussels to increase their qualifications. Emily returned home on the death of her aunt in 1842 and remained there for the rest of her life.
Her poems were discovered by Charlotte in 1846 and published in a joint volume entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. It included the pieces on which her reputation as a fine poet now rests: ‘To Imagination’, ‘Plead for Me’ and ‘Last Lines’. Emily Brontë died from tuberculosis in 1848, only a few months after the death of her brother, Branwell.

George Orwell (1903-1950) is one of England’s most famous writers and social commentators. He is the author of the classic political satire Animal Farm and the dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is also well known for his essays and journalism, particularly his works covering his travels and his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War. His writing is celebrated for its piercing clarity, purpose and wit and his books continue to be bestsellers all over the world.

Criselda Yabes has published eight books, including Sarena’s Story: The Loss of a Kingdom, which also won
the UP Centennial Literary Prize for Creative Non-Fiction simultaneously with Below the Crying Mountain.
A journalism graduate of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, she worked as correspondent for the
international press in Manila, covering politics and coups as well as other major events overseas.

Eva Wong Nava was born on a tropical island where a merlion spurts water. Her ancestors braved monsoon winds sailing from the Middle Kingdom to British Malaya to plant roots in Southeast Asia. When the winds changed, her relatives sailed again and found another home somewhere in the western hemisphere, braving snow storms and hail. Eva has done many things in life, like banking and teaching, but writing remains her most favourite thing to do. She combines degrees in literature and art history and writes stories that explore identity, culture, and belonging by adding a dash of magic. Eva has written an award-winning middle-grade book (Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards, 2018) and several best-selling picture books. She lives in the Land of Albion with her family, two scampering squirrels, and a regal fox.

June Ho is the intrepid wandering Booktuber of The No Bull Channel. A motivator and a speaker with a sense of humour, she knows books can change lives. And life, she believes, ought to be loaded with love, laughter, and literature.

Tunku Halim was born in 1964. He studied law at the University of Sussex and is a qualified UK Barrister. He has lived in the UK, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia. He worked as Legal Counsel for a global IT company before turning to writing. Twenty books later, he is dubbed Asia’s Stephen King. By delving into Malay myth, legends and folklore, his writing is regarded as ‘World Gothic’.

His novel, Dark Demon Rising, was nominated for the 1999 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award whilst his second novel, Vermillion Eye, was used as a study text in The National University of Singapore’s Language and Literature course. He has had three consecutive wins in Malaysia’s Star-Popular Readers’ Choice Awards between 2015 and 2017.

He enjoys travelling, but mostly doing nothing and living by the sea.

Anindya Ghose is the Heinz Riehl Chair Professor of Business at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern
School of Business, where he holds a joint appointment in the Information, Operations and Management
Science, and Marketing Departments. In 2017, Thinkers50 identified him among the 30 management thinkers
most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led. His opinion pieces and research
have been featured on the BBC, CNBC, MSNBC, NPR, NBC, and in The Economist, the New York Times,
WIRED, Time, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Chi Pang-yuan (b. 1924) is an internationally recognized educator, scholar, and author. She is the co-editor of
Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey (2000) and The Last of the Whampoa
Breed: Stories of the Chinese Diaspora (Columbia, 2003), among other books.

Rudyard Kipling was a British author best known for his children’s books including The Jungle Book and is regarded as one of the most important contributors to the short story form. Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay, India where his father, John Lockwood Kipling was an artist and teacher of architectural sculpture at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art. He spent the first six of his life in India, where he was cared for by an Indian nanny, whom he later referred to as his ‘very dear friend’ who inspired many of his stories. Kipling returned to India in 1882, where he worked as a journalist and began to establish himself as a writer. Throughout his life, Kipling travelled extensively and lived in various countries and all of those experiences reflected in his work. His writing was highly popular in his time, and it earned him several awards and honours including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.