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Rising Stars: An Evening with Singaporean Writers

Five of Singapore’s most exciting writers come to Melbourne as a part of their whirlwind tour across Australia.
Live EventPay What You Wish / Free

Event and Ticketing Details

Dates & Times

Wednesday 22 May
6:30 PM - 7:45 PM

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

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Accessibility

Accessible toilets available

Assistive Listening

Auslan interpreting available by-request

Companion tickets available

Registered Assistance Animals welcome

Wheelchair accessible

For information regarding accessibility at The Wheeler Centre, click here. Please notify us of all access requirements when booking online so we can assist you with your visit. If you require further information, please contact ticketing@wheelercentre.com.

About the Event

There are five stars arising out of the stormy sea, and they just so happen to be Singapore’s most vital and exciting writers at work today touring Australia. At this once-in-a-blue-moon event, hear from an incredible slate of Singaporean writers practicing across a wide range of genres and artistic modalities, as they discuss their work and writing practices in a special cross-cultural exchange. The evening will open with a performance from spoken word artist and poet Shivram Gopinath, followed by insights into the Singaporean literary scene from Amanda Chong (poet and playwright), Daryl Lim Wei Jie (poet, editor, translator), Daryl Qilin Yam (novelist, arts organiser), and Joshua Ip (poet, arts organiser). Hosted by RMIT’s Sreedhevi Iyer.   Presented in partnership with RMIT Culture. Supported by Liminal Magazine.  [modula id="27884"]   This event is supported by the National Arts Council of Singapore and Sing Lit Station, a literary non-profit and charity (est. Jul 2016) that serves as a platform where readers and writers meet. [modula id="27888"]

Featuring

Amanda Chong

Amanda Chong is a lawyer trained in Cambridge and Harvard who writes when she should be sleeping. Amanda explores themes of gender and power in her work as a poet and playwright. Her poetry collection, Professions (2016), was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018. Her poetry has been engraved on the Marina Bay Helix Bridge and included in the Cambridge International GCSE syllabus. Her plays include the one woman show Psychobitch which sold out its extended run (Wild Rice, 2023), the musical The Feelings Farm (Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, 2021) and the award-winning #WomenSupportingWomen (T:>Works, 2022) which was also staged in Cambridge, UK. Amanda co-founded a literacy charity, served as an adviser to the Youth Court, and received the Commonwealth Points of Light Award in 2022 from Her Majesty The Queen Elizabeth II.
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Shivram Gopinath

Born in Chennai, India, Shivram Gopinath is a poet who has called Singapore home for more than two decades. He arrived for a business management degree and stayed for the Char Kway Teow. His work has been heard at Singapore Writers Festival, Borobudur Cultural and Writers Festival, Jaipur Literary Festival and more. He teaches workshops structured around poetic identity, and is a twice-winning Singapore National Poetry Slam champion. His upcoming book is Dey (Ethos 2024).
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Joshua Ip

Joshua Ip is a Singaporean poet, editor, and literary organiser. He has published six-ish poetry collections, won the Singapore Literature Prize for his debut, sonnets from the singlish (Math Paper Press, 2012), and placed in three different categories of the Golden Point Award. His latest collection of anachronistic translations of Tang Poetry, translations to the tanglish, was published in Aug 2021. He has edited eleven literary anthologies, including the A Luxury and SingPoWriMo series. He directs Sing Lit Station, an overactive literary charity that runs initiatives including SingPoWriMo, SEAPoWriMo and poetry.sg. He received Singapore’s Young Artist Award (2017). www.joshuaip.com
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Daryl Lim Wei Jie

Daryl Lim Wei Jie 林伟杰 is a poet, editor and translator from Singapore. He is the author of A Book of Changes and Anything but Human, a finalist for the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize. He conceptualised and co-edited two anthologies: Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet, which won a Special Award at the 2023 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, and The Second Link, which invites Singapore and Malaysian writers to reflect on the unique relationship between the two countries. He also translated Short Tongue, a collection by the Singaporean Chinese poet Wang Mun Kiat. He won the Young Artist Award in 2023, Singapore’s highest award for young art practitioners.
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Daryl Qilin Yam

Daryl Qilin YAM (b. 1991) is a writer, editor and arts organiser from Singapore. He is the author of the novella Shantih Shantih Shantih (2021), shortlisted for the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize, and the novel Lovelier, Lonelier (2021), the Singapore nominee for the 2023 International Dublin Literary Award. Be Your Own Bae, Yam’s fourth book and first short story collection, is forthcoming from Epigram Books in late 2024.
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Sreedhevi Iyer

Dr Sreedhevi Iyer, an Indian-Malaysian-Australian author, is a graduate of the first cohort of City University Hong Kong’s unique MFA program in Asian Writing in English. Her fiction work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in the United States, along with publications in literary journals in Australia, Malaysia, United States and Sweden.

Dr Iyer is a fiction reader for Drunken Boat, the oldest online literary journal and has taught Creative Writing at City University Hong Kong, and currently teaches Creative Writing at RMIT University in Melbourne.

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