Daren Shiau (b. 1971)
BIOGRAPHY
Daren Shiau is an award-winning fiction writer, poet and editor. He was the National Arts Council’s Young Artist of the Year in 2002, and has been described by The Arts Magazine as “among the most exciting of the post-1965 generation of writers” from Singapore.
His works include a novel, Heartland (1999), a poetry collection, Peninsular: Archipelagos and Other Islands (2000), and a microfiction collection, Velouria (2007). Heartland, which received a Singapore Literature Prize commendation award, has been cited by the travel guide Lonely Planet as “the definitive Singapore novel,” and is a prescribed English literature text on the Singapore-Cambridge GCE ‘O’-Level syllabus.
Velouria, a seminal collection of prose poems was launched just after Shiau received the first prize in an inaugural microfiction competition organised by Singapore’s main English broadsheet The Straits Times. He has also co-edited an experimental mono-titular anthology titled Coast (2010), featuring over fifty Singapore-based writers contributing works with the title "Coast".
Shiau was named as one of "50 Faces to Watch" in the National Day edition of The Straits Times in 1993. A decade later, in 2003, he was again named by The Straits Times on National Day as one of “38 Singaporeans Who Make a Difference to Singapore”.
His short stories and poems have been translated into Italian and German, and he has been invited to read at international literary festivals, and at universities in New York, Boston and London.
Author Photo and Biography © Daren Shiau. All rights reserved.
