SWF 2012 / The Ayam Curtain x Balik Kampung ...

BooksActually & Math Paper Press
proudly presents

at Singapore Writers Festival 2012

THE AYAM CURTAIN edited by JY Yang & Joyce Chng
BALIK KAMPUNG edited by Verena Tay
FISH EATS LION edited by Jason Erik Lundberg

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Date: 4 Nov 2012, Sunday
Time: 4 pm ~ 5 pm
Venue: Singapore Management University
(ilovebooks.com Pavilion, Campus Green)

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Kong jiao wei, Hokkien, means “speaking bird language.” It is a cock-and-bull story, a flight of fancy and, incidentally, the perfect phrase to describe this collection of microfiction with a quintessentially Singaporean flavour. The reader steps into a technological dystopia one moment and wakes up a crow in the next story, all within the space of a hundred words.

Expect a spirit war in underground tunnels, genetically-modified babies and a Singapore overrun by anti-government spies in these short stories. Be entertained by a motley gang of characters both strange and the deranged, uber-rational and supernatural, feathered or plucked in The Ayam Curtain.

Balik Kampung is a collection of eight new tales of home written by authors who have lived in their neighbourhoods for 10 years or more. A mysterious lighthouse in Marine Parade calls you home. A missing monkey in Changi recalls your carefree childhood. A red plastic bag in Nee Soon tells you who you truly are.
We invite you to read our stories, reminisce and return, once again, back home.

Fish Eats Lion collects the best original speculative fiction being written in Singapore today, a home-grown anthology featuring a refreshing variety of voices and perspectives. Here are tales that are recognizably science fiction and fantasy, and others that blend genres and tropes, including absurdism, police procedural, fairy tales, steampunk, pre- and post-apocalypse, political satire, and alien first contact. These twenty-two stories—from emerging writers publishing their first work to winners of the Singapore Literature Prize and the Cultural Medallion—explore the fundamental singularity of the Lion City.

This book is a celebration of the vibrant creative power underlying Singapore's inventive prose stylists, where what is considered normal and what is strange are blended in fantastic new ways.

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JY Yang is a scientist-turned-writer-turned-journalist who gets the odd short story published every now and then. You can find her works in Ceriph, Fish Eats Lion, and the upcoming Steampunk Revolution edited by SF/F stalwart Ann Vandermeer.

Joyce Chng writes science fiction and YA. Her novels Wolf At The Door and Obsidian Moon, Obsidian Eye (written as J. Damask) are published by Lyrical Press. Her story “The Sound of Breaking Glass” is side by side with luminaries in The Apex Book of World SFF Vol II.

A Singaporean theatre practitioner for over 25 years, Verena Tay has published three collections of plays: In the Company of Women (SNP Editions, 2004), In the Company of Heroes and Victimology (both by Math Paper Press, 2011). An Honorary Fellow at the International Writing Program, University of Iowa (Aug–Nov 2007), she now focuses on writing fiction and is studying part-time for an MFA in Creative Writing (City University of Hong Kong, 2012–14). Spectre: Stories from Dark to Light (Math Paper Press, 2012) is her first collection of short stories. Apart from Balik Kampung, she has also edited another anthology of short stories entitled, A Monsoon Feast (DFP Productions/Monsoon Books, 2012).

Jason Erik Lundberg is the author of several books, most recently The Alchemy of Happiness (2012) and Red Dot Irreal (2011), as well as the founding editor of LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, and co-editor of A Field Guide to Surreal Botany (2008) and Scattered, Covered, Smothered (2005). His writing has appeared in over 50 publications in five countries, and he has lived in Singapore since 2007.