is a writer, editor and arts organiser from Singapore. Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize and nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award, he is the author of two novels, a novella and the bestselling short story collection Be Your Own Bae (2024). He co-founded the literary charity Sing Lit Station, where he presently serves as the managing editor of its publishing arm AFTERIMAGE.
His writing has appeared in periodicals and publications such as the Berlin Quarterly, the Sewanee Review, The Straits Times and The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singapore Short Stories anthology series. His first novel, Kappa Quartet (2016), was selected by The Business Times as one of the best novels of the year, and was described by QLRS as “[breaking] new ground in Singaporean writing… an immensely sympathetic and humane exploration of our existential condition.”
Snow falls over Singapore for exactly four minutes and twenty-six seconds, quietly interrupting the lives of a dozen individuals, lonely and adrift: an art student and a former fling, chancing upon one another at Punggol MRT station; two men awake at 4am, watching YouTube videos of hail falling over the island nation; a sugar baby trawling through Google Maps, exploring the homes and neighbourhoods of her former clients...
Witness the near-miraculous ways passers-by can transform the trajectories of one another’s lives.
Shantih Shantih Shantih is a heady mix of desire and dauntlessness that revels in its interconnections, pulling close a community that is at once together and apart. Get your copy of this new edition of Shantih Shantih Shantih from the Epigram Bookshop!
Being your best, most authentic self can be a somewhat grievous process: the winner of a beauty pageant bursts into flames the moment she is crowned; a man enters a dream and re-encounters a former lover in Pyongyang, North Korea; a gaggle of hipsters catches news of a secret Bon Iver concert playing somewhere on Dempsey Hill, only to risk the survival of their friendship.
Daryl Qilin Yam’s long-awaited (and bestselling!!) first collection of short fiction combines magical realism, speculative autobiography and ekphrasis to weave illusory figures out of gung-ho millennials and the well-meaning mentor figures who fail them, and unveils the strange quests queer folk must embark on in order to keep a hold on love. Get your copy today from Epigram Bookshop, Kinokuniya, Wormhole or as an e-book.
✺ APPEARANCES
For private, corporate, media or school-based engagements featuring the author such as workshops, readings, talks and interviews, get in touch here.