Singapore Writers Festival 2024: Poet and educator Yong Shu Hoong brings fresh perspectives as new festival director

One thing he was more familiar with, however, is the idea of isolation—and “how it gives rise to creative sparks and inspiration”, says Yong. “Even during the worst lockdowns, it became kind of a writing residency for me to write new poems, a lot of which [are featured in] Anatomy of a Wave.” He recently won the Singapore Literature Prize 2024 in English Poetry—his third—for the 2022 poetry collection.

“The nature of being a Singapore writer has also evolved,” says Yong. “The outlook has become much more universal because the human condition is universal.” There is also a growing interest in Singaporean writers, with more finding success overseas, including Amanda Lee Koe and Rachel Heng, whose novels appeal to an international audience.

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One of the few multilingual literary festivals in the world, the SWF is also a celebration of the written and spoken word in Singapore’s official languages: English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil. For Yong, a highlight this year is the focus on literary pioneer and Cultural Medallion recipient Lew Poo Chan, better known by her pen name Dan Ying, who is one of the best-known Chinese female poets in the international literary community. “It’s not very often that we encounter the works of a Chinese female poet, as a lot of the Cultural Medallion recipients in Chinese poetry tend to be men. Perhaps Dan Ying, being a woman, brings a different perspective to poetry.”

Meanwhile, some of the international headliners of SWF 2024 include Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan, a two-time Giller Prize winner and chair of the 2023 Booker Prize jury; American academic and author Cat Bohannon, who penned The New York Times bestseller Eve, a book about the female body; and Malaysian sequential artist and Eisner Award winner Erica Eng.

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“[We want] to ensure that we don’t just programme the Festival based on big names from overseas. The main purpose is also to have them interact with Singapore writers so we also gain from their experiences,” Yong shares. “Literature is being written in so many different languages; and literature written in English can be very different from one country to the next. The diversity of genres, writing styles, languages and cultures would help to enrich the Festival.”

Yong never set out to become a writer; he only ventured into writing later in life. The computer science graduate started out as a programmer. It was only when he enrolled into the Texas A&M University in the US for his Masters in Business Administration that he joined a writers’ group. “Writing was a good way to document my experience being so far away from home, and also to make new friends. It just came about organically.”

The part-time lecturer in creative writing at the Nanyang Technological University is currently working on two manuscripts. One is a book of non‑fiction writings, including essays and prose, about birds and their symbolism in our cultures, from his residency at the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve. The other is his next collection of poetry “that’s a little bit more confessional and personal as it touches on my caregiving duties as a son to my elderly parents”.

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