“I’ve always had a dispute with narration, since it traps the reader in immersion, like a drowning dragonfly. (Are writers part of the entertainment industry? Are books pastimes?)”
Read More“I am interested in what people will do to propel themselves into wealth, luxury and excess—especially if you possess none of it but believe it to be your birthright.”
Read More“I am averse to the idea of a conventional-looking facade and simplified visual emulation of historical language. I am not too interested in what the image ‘looks’ like; I am more focused on how a complex thought can be represented through methods learnt from an existing long-established practice of painting.”
Read More“This debut show is something of a coming-of age-story, a personal renaissance. The realisation that I had the magic within myself all along.”
Read More"Language is modification. It shows that the self is really a perpetual performance."
Read More"I think of hope in the same way I think of utopia: it’s not a fixed position, its very essence comes from the fact that we are always striving for better."
Read More"I could pinpoint the major presence of all these texts in my book. I used it all. I was making my own curriculum."
Read More“There is so much embedded elitism in publishing and arts scenes, so we wanted to platform both emerging and experienced creatives alongside each other. “
Read More“Just as my work often reflects on the journey of migration and the blending of different cultures, Marvellous Mythical Mates encourages children to explore their surroundings and understand their home in a new light.”
Read More“The shape of the film is the hardest part about making films—it takes me a long time […] and it is the richest, most tormenting thing.”
Read More“The lawless, irrational and ephemeral temperament of dreams corresponds to our true nature, therefore functioning as a form of resistance against colonial exploitation.”
Read More“Working on the essays in the book revealed to me that each creative work is profoundly associated with the place where it is conceived and produced. Space isn’t merely a container where we and other living and non-living beings exist, but turns into a place by the very act of our living, and that such places have their own deep-time history of which we are a minor but inseparable event.”
Read More“[…] most of the existing Asian-Australian stories we hear are focused on Asian diaspora in major cities, often overshadowing stories about those from or living in regional towns. “
Read More“Working with the Vietnamese community in Sunshine and the surrounding suburbs was my way of learning more about the post-war impact that led to the division between communities in Vietnam—especially so considering that the Vietnamese perspective is consistently ignored from the US dominant narrative.”
Read More“It’s a wilful inscrutability, because I never want to be co-opted.”
Read More“I like to think that writing creatively within the exacting constraints of form is my way of simultaneously embodying and satirising the experience of being a creative in Singapore.”
Read More“I define artistic success as creating work that I am personally proud of.”
Read More“That journey is so endless: seeing the people who raised you as people, [and] realising they existed wholly without you.”
Read More“The YA genre may seem trite [to some], but even before YA was a category, ‘YA’ books were being used [as teaching aids] in school such as The Outsiders or The Catcher in the Rye, which suggests that YA can rightly be used to convey serious and important issues, especially to a younger audience.”
Read More“[…] the aim of literature is to provide an elevated and truthful representation of a society through language. So, if any piece of writing doesn’t consider the multiple languages—and the many forms of the same language—of a given society, then its not an effective literary practice.”
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