Ng Yi-Sheng (b. 1980)
BIOGRAPHY
Ng Yi-Sheng is a full-time writer in multiple genres and a noted LGBT rights activist. His debut poetry collection, last boy, won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2008.
As a student in Singapore, he was mentored by poets Lee Tzu Pheng and Angeline Yap as part of the Creative Arts Programme. He went on study Creative Writing at Columbia University under the tutelage of writers such as Stephen Donnelly and Paul Violi, and has recently completed a fiction writing MA at the University of East Anglia.
His non-poetry publications include the best-selling non-fiction work SQ21: Singapore Queers in the 21st Century and a novelisation of the movie Eating Air. Furthermore, he served as a co-editor of GASPP: a Gay Anthology of Singapore Poetry and Prose and Eastern Heathens: An Anthology of Subverted Asian Folklore, and as a translator for Wong Yoon Wah’s Mandarin poetry collection The New Village.
Additionally, his works have been included in collections such as Double Skin: New Voices from Singapore and Italy, Reflecting on the Merlion and A Luxury We Cannot Afford, as well as journals such as Cha: An Asian Journal, Ceriph, and Prairie Schooner.
In the field of performing arts, he has collaborated with theatre groups such as W!LDRICE, TheatreWorks and Toy Factory Theatre Ensemble, yielding plays such as Hungry, Reservoir, Georgette: The Musical, 251 and the Life! Theatre Awards-nominated The Last Temptation of Stamford Raffles. He has also documented the arts as a Straits Times theatre reviewer and as a blogger for the Singapore International Festival of the Arts.
Over the past few years, he has been particularly active in the performance poetry scene, and was a founding member of the spoken word troupe The Party Action People. He was a co-curator of the sadly defunct multi-disciplinary arts event the SPORE Art Salon and continues to co-organise the annual LGBT literary evening, ContraDiction.
Author Photo and Biography © Ng Yi-Sheng. All rights reserved.
