Yu-Mei Balasingamchow's Blog, page 4

This thing is happening tonight

I'm speaking at the National Library tonight, together with the poet Grace Chia Krakovic, at the following event:

Gender Matters: A Conversation about Women in Writing
7 - 8 pm, Thursday, 10 July 2014
Visitors' Briefing Room, National Library (Level 1)

In this day and age, what do terms like "women's fiction" or "women's writing" mean? What is it like to be a writer who happens to be a woman, in a publishing industry dominated by men? Grace Chia Krakovic and Yu-Mei Balasingamchow will discuss the...

I went on vacation with a bunch of three-year-old girls

Not intentionally. It just so happened that they were everywhere I went, during a whirlwind trip to France and the UK in June.

First, there was my cousin's wedding celebration near the village of St Laurent in France. Three children were in attendance, the youngest of whom was three.


Next I visited some old friends who now live in Canterbury. Their daughter is my goddaughter, and she turned three a few months ago. Finally, I went to see other old friends in London, whose twin daughters were on...

Starry Island: New Writing from Singapore

Not that everything here is about islands, but it just so happens that I have two short stories that will be published in MANOA , a literary journal published by the University of Hawai‘i Press, and they've decided to title the volume, "Starry Island: New Writing from Singapore".

The full list of contributors has just been published on MANOA's Facebook page (not on their blog, though), and it's thrilling to see the names of so many authors and poets whom I admire. *squee*

My two stories that wil...

Islands, islands everywhere

Since early this year, I've been working with Marcus Ng on an exhibition about Singapore's offshore islands, which opens at the National Museum of Singapore today. The detailed information isn't on the museum website yet, but here it is:

Balik Pulau: Stories from Singapore's Islands
2 June - 10 August 2014
Stamford Gallery, National Museum of Singapore

Singapore is not just one "sunny island, set in the sea", but an archipelago of more than 70 islands. For centuries, these islands have been impor...

A little short story that's gone a long way

The official announcement was out yesterday, so I can say it here: my short story "Grandmother" is one of 19 shortlisted for this year's Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Woot!

I got the official (but embargoed) notification from the Commonwealth Foundation a couple of weeks ago, so I've had a while to digest the news. But I'm still super-chuffed when I think about it– and yes, I think only a Britishism like "chuffed" really conveys what I'm feeling here.

I'm also really surprised that only two e...

Call for submissions: In Transit

Oh my, almost three months without a new post. No wonder a few people asked me if I'm still blogging anymore ...

(It also makes it funny that I was invited to a government event in January and then introduced as a "blogger", as if that's the only thing I do --- would you introduce someone at an event as a "smartphone user" as if that were their official job or designation?)

Anyway, here's a good reason for a new post: the call for submissions for a new literary anthology.
My co-editor Ruihe and...

"Last night you got see the show ...?"

This exhibition is what I've been working on since mid-July. I wanted to call it, "Last night you got see the show ...?" But the government isn't wild about using Singlish so prominently in the work it commissions, so we wound up with the more ho-hum, factual title: "50 Years of Television: An Exhibition".

It's running in the Stamford Gallery at the National Museum of Singapore until 19 January 2014. It's the first exhibition I've co-curated (i.e. researched and conceptualised from scratch wit...

Oh ya, the (Singapore) Writers Festival

Yesterday, Agagooga asked if my Twitter account was dead. I said with a wail, No, I've just been sooooo busy...

Things coming up that are not related to the Singapore Writers Festival:
"50 Years of Television: An Exhibition", which I've been busy co-curating and which will open at the National Museum of Singapore in late November. We put out an open call for family photographs taken (intentionally or not) with the TV set --- there's still time to send in something if you have one.The deadline f...

A week of school talks

Nothing like showing up for a talk with students, having them Google you, and then feeling apologetic that this blog hasn't been (until this post) updated in over a month.

Ya, busy lah.

I spoke at three different schools this past week. It wasn't by design --- one school booked me a few months ago, then when other invitations trickled in, everyone wanted to schedule something for the same week. So on Monday I talked to some Nanyang Technological University communications students about exhibiti...

Before Midnight before midnight

I haven't been to the movies in forever, but thanks to young punk friends who have their shit together, tonight I'm going to a preview screening of Before Midnight, the third movie to come from the Richard Linklater-Julie Delpy-Ethan Hawke triumvirate.

(If you don't know what the Before Sunrise/Before Sunset/Before Midnight movies are about, and also want to remain spoiler-free, refer to the first two paragraphs of the current Wikipedia entry on Before Sunset. There's also a fantastic New...