Welcome to my page!

My language is a Bedouin thief, delighting in foreign sands;
it understands the erasure of monks, the ritual of palimpsests ...

Wanderlust Ghazal, RHINO 2016 

2019 Events

Featured Chicago Writer, Carl Sandburg Literary Award, USA, October 10

StoryStudio Chicago Writers Festival, USA, October 4-6

Featured Reader, Travelling Molly's Reading Series, USA, August 12

Northwestern Summer Writers' Conference, USA, August 15-17

Northeastern Illinois University, USA, June 28

Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Cienhas Humanas, University of São Paulo, Brazil, June 13

Sacatar Foundation Fellowship, Brazil, April-June

Instituto de Letras, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Brazil,May 30

Rimbun Dahan, Southeast Asian Arts Residency, Malaysia, February -April

Ekphrasis Workshop, Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia, March 16

Chicago Quarterly Review Reading, The Book Stall, USA. February 17

Click Here For 2018 And Earlier

About me...

I have three works of fiction: Shambala Junction (Aurora Metro, 2016) Ode to Broken Things (Repeater, 2016) and Rules of Desire (Fixi, 2015);

two poetry collections, The Third Glass of Wine (Writer’s Workshop, 2015), and The Palimpsest of Exile (Rubicon Press, 2009)

and edited five anthologies of Southeast Asian fiction (I have been mentoring Malaysian writing for almost two decades).

I moved to Chicago in 2012, after Shanghai, where I had been Distinguished Professor at Shanghai International Studies University,

have taught in the United States, India, China, Netherlands, Malaysia and Singapore,

 now Core Faculty at StoryStudio Chicago, teach at the Graham School of University of Chicago, and am affiliated to the Buffett Institute for Global Studies at Northwestern University,

I hold a PhD In English (sociolinguistics) from Texas A&M University.

A taste of my work... 

Short-short fiction & Poetry

(2019) Sempiternal Fire, Life and Legends, 7th Edition, April 2019.

(2018) Bangkok: 1959, Vestal Review, Issue 51: 8. Pushcart Prize Nomination, 2018. Best Small Fictions 2019 

Short Story

(2016) The Hierarchy of Grief. Shortlisted for the DNA-OUT OF PRINT Short Fiction Contest.(

2015) Doppelganger. World Literature Today.

Essays

(2019) Malaysian English Writing Today. World Literature Today, April 16. (First published in The Edge, March 4, 2019.

(2018) Why are many Bengali rhymes and songs for children, loved for generations, so misogynistic? Scroll India, September 2018

Travel Writing

(2018) Beacons of Inspiration,  Options, The Edge (Cover Story), April 29, 2019.

(2014) A Journey to the Dalai Lama. Chicago Literati, Wanderlust Issue, August 2014.

Book Extracts

Shambala Junction: Read an Excerpt on Aerogram

Ode to Broken Things: Read an Excerpt on Muse India