By Zoey Chow
Diploma in Creative Writing for TV and New Media
Singapore Polytechnic
Following the success of The Leader, The Teacher, and You, Mr Lim Siong Guan (second from left) and Ms Joanne Lim (far right) with special guests at the launch of the Chinese version of their book Winning with Honour (Source: Joanne Lim)
The father-daughter pair of Lim Siong Guan and Joanne Lim, authors of The Leader, The Teacher, And You were surprised when they were announced as the co-winners of the non-fiction category of the Singapore Literature Prize in 2014.
The book had been on the bestseller list for over 40 weeks, but neither had had any expectations before the ceremony.
“We thought we were just going for dinner,” Ms Lim, 38, recalls.
The Leader, The Teacher, And You discusses principles and values as well as Singapore’s future. It was inspired by Mr Lim’s time in the public sector which allowed him to write “a compilation of experiences and of lessons”.
71-year-old Mr Lim was the Head of Civil Service from 1999 to 2006. During his career in the civil service, he worked with Singapore’s founding fathers, Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Dr Goh Keng Swee. From 2007 to 2016, Mr Lim was the Group President of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC).
Ms Lim is the founder and creative director of The Right Perspective, a consultancy specialising in writing, strategic communications, branding initiatives and creative services.
She explains that her father’s passion for the country is about “the survival and success of Singapore,” and how “he is very concerned about whether Singapore is going to be future-ready”.
The Collaboration
The pair has great chemistry, constantly finishing each other’s sentences. Mr Lim is also quick to give credit to his daughter.
“Quite frankly, Joanne is the one who actually wrote the book,” Mr Lim says.
Working with family can sometimes lead to tension but Ms Lim says the process was “smooth”. Mr Lim had a lot of material for Ms Lim to refer to, one of the most helpful being a farewell book he received from staff when he left the civil service. The book was a compilation of all his slides and short anecdotes.
“More importantly, which was very touching, was how they wrote a small paragraph of their observations about my father and the lessons they learnt,” Ms Lim says.
Ms Lim sifted through all this material and picked out ideas which she felt “would be useful” for her generation and the generations after her.
Following the success of The Leader, The Teacher, And You, Mr Lim and Ms Lim published a second book, Winning with Honour: In Relationships, Family, Organisations, Leadership, and Life, in 2016. A Chinese version was released in 2018. The book focuses on “why honour is important for your present and future,” especially in a Singaporean context.
By Nah Damien
Diploma in Creative Writing for Television and New Media
Singapore Polytechnic
To say that Joshua Ip is a busy man is a bit of an understatement.
Besides having a full-time job, the 36-year-old is the co-winner of the Singapore Literature Prize in 2014 for English Poetry for his collection of poems Sonnets from the Singlish, as well the recipient of the Young Artist Award in 2017. He is also co-founder and Station Director of the non-profit Sing Lit Station, which aims to be a platform for readers and writers to meet.
“I have to multi-task everything,” says Joshua. “So I live half my life on the internet – I carry my phone everywhere, I WhatsApp while I’m driving.”
In an interview with the Mindful Company in 2017, he said he balanced his careers by “neglecting friends and family”; how much of that is dry sarcasm and how much is truth is unknown. But one only has to observe him in conversation – the rapid-fire pace of sentence after sentence, together with a calm yet calculated tone of speaking – to see a man who lives a life as fast as he speaks.
Passion for Sing Lit
So perhaps true to form, Joshua is currently working on several projects, many of which go beyond being words on a page.
Upcoming works include his graphic novel Ten Stories Below, a seven-language translation anthology titled House Party, and co-writing Farquhar: The Musical. Many of his projects are collaborations.
“I think [collaboration] makes me more accountable,” he says. “I’m a very lazy person; I usually don’t finish my own homework by myself.” Joshua describes the process as “a ping-pong game” where work is passed to and fro between collaborators, giving one more encouragement to respond.
Speaking of encouragement, Joshua is a believer that Singaporeans are not given enough motivation to explore and acknowledge Singapore literature. Although he recognises a “niche enthusiasm” for Sing Lit, he lists many factors that prevent local works from going mainstream – from the way literature is handled as a school subject, to the “colonial mindset” that Western material is seen as “better”, to short attention spans that are a result of the rise in technology.
Despite this, Joshua is still passionate about local stories. “As a post-colonial country which needs to establish itself as a nation, how else are you going to say what is Singapore?” he explains. “Even if it’s something like the LKY (Lee Kuan Yew) story, sure, so be it, but at least it's a local story. Something where… you feel a sense of Singapore.”
Sing Lit Station goes regional
Perhaps it is no surprise that his passion and advocacy of local literature led to his involvement with Sing Lit Station.
One may have seen Sing Lit Station hosting a variety of strange, unorthodox, yet fascinating initiatives over the years – most notably the Sing Lit Body Slam in 2017, where spoken word poetry and pro-wrestling met in the ring.
“Most of our programmes started as a Facebook thread in the middle of the night. There would be a response, a little bit of back and forth,” he says. These programmes are yet another example of Joshua’s willingness to collaborate across genres and disciplines.
And Joshua has a different direction for Sing Lit Station this year – to go regional.
The organisation’s trademark SingPoWriMo (Singapore Writing Month) has expanded into SEAPoWriMo in the coming years to include Southeast Asian countries. Sing Lit Station has also launched the 2018 Hawker Prize, a Southeast Asian adaptation of the US-based Pushcart Prize, to recognise poetry published in literary journals around the region. The 2019 edition of the prize will be open for submissions towards the end of the year.
“Ultimately, if there’s a whole community in the region that reads each other, and doesn’t look at the West only to be strengthened – to duplicate the stamp and be the recogniser of what’s good – then I think that’s very healthy for the market,” says Joshua.
By Hazirah Nurfitrah Binte Mohamed Hanifar
Diploma in Creative Writing for TV and New Media
Singapore Polytechnic
Josephine Chia with her award-winning book Kampong Spirit: Gotong Royong. Her childhood in Potong Pasir inspired her to become a storyteller. (Photo credit: Hazirah Nurfitrah Binte Mohamed Hanifar)
You could say that Josephine Chia ‘picked up’ the love for reading in a rather unusual way.
The Peranakan author, who is now 67, grew up in Singapore’s Kampong Potong Pasir, where an English family lived in a house up the hill. Sometimes, that family would throw out books and comics that Josephine would pick up and read.
Stories from Potong Pasir
A collection of short stories of her childhood forms the basis of one of her best-known works, Kampong Spirit: Gotong Royong/Life in Potong Pasir 1955 to 1965. The book was awarded the biennial Singapore Literature Prize for English Creative Non-Fiction in 2014. The recognition is fitting because Josephine credits many aspects of her kampong upbringing for shaping her to become a storyteller and a writer.
From reading Enid Blyton books thrown out by the English family up the hill, to telling stories to her neighbours in the evenings to entertain them, to falling in love with the English language after nearly missing out on an education, there are many ways that Kampong Potong Pasir inspired Josephine to be the prolific writer she is today.
Josephine wants to pay it forward by writing stories that will inspire the next generation and by mentoring young authors.
Inspiring the Next Generation
Josephine recalls doing a reading of her 2017 book Goodbye My Kampong at a library. Afterwards, two teenagers approached her to get their book signed and thanked her for writing it for them. According to Josephine, this is the joy she gets from her writing that it “contributes to the young”. She says that satisfaction doesn’t come from just her many accolades and her motivation is certainly not money.
“It [writing] doesn’t make much money, you know? If one book sells for $19.90, I don’t even make one dollar,” she says.
Josephine was in fact once a corporate high-flyer who worked for many years in Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations before she decided to pursue her passion.
On her way back to Singapore from the UK, where she had lived since 1985, Josephine pondered on an age-old question: what was she going to say on her deathbed when people asked her what she had done in her life? Would she say she was a PR marketing manager?
“No, I don't think so. I think I want to say I'm a writer,” she says.
