Salil's Article Made Accessible!

Last month I told you about Salil Tripathy's essay on the political imagination and literature of Malaysia and Singapore being published in Indian journal Biblio. The piece was behind subscription so I don't think many (if any) of you read it. You can now find a (in his words) shorter, tighter version of it at Global Asia. Please do go take a look because it would be great if we could stir up some discussion on it!

Who is Vyvyane Loh?

A local writer has been shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Prize - one of the world's major literary awards ... I needed Dreamer Idiot to nudge my elbow and point it out to me. (Who learns from who, hey, on this blog?)

Vyvyane was born in Ipoh, and grew up in Singapore. She's a dancer, a choreographer, studied medicine at Boston University Medical School, travelled to Brazil and Nepal to do medical electives, worked up to four jobs (spinning/aerobics instructor, personal trainer, dance instructor, moonlighting doctor) while pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing ... her life-story is fascinating (makes me feel utterly totally inadequate), go take a look. Not to mention she has a body to die for. I'm not jealous. Not really.

And of course, there's the novel. Her first. Breaking the Tongue, which chronicles the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in World War II. And she's been compared to Rushdie and Ondaatje.

This is for sure someone we should be cheering on and learning from.