NON-ESSENTIAL THOUGHTS (TRANSCRIPT)
Adia Tay

Adia is a Singaporean songstress who released her debut EP Kintsugi in 2019. She has been an avid part of her local music scene since 2016, and has played at notable venues and events such as The Esplanade, Hard Rock Cafe, Wala Wala, Acid Bar, Singapore Night Festival, Sofar Sounds, and more. Adia’s music grounds itself in nuanced, poetic writing, and wholehearted instrumentation. She is also an aspiring poet and illustrator, and in 2019, independently published her book Close Enough. She is currently writing and illustrating a children's book, and working on her sophomore album.

ASYMPTOMATIC
Crispin Rodrigues

Crispin Rodrigues is a poet and short fiction writer. His poems and short fiction have been featured in anthologies such as Kepulauan, From Walden to Woodlands and A Luxury We Must Afford, as well as journals such as Tiger Moth Review and SOFTBLOW. He is the author of two poetry collections, Pantomime and The Nomad Principle, both published by Math Paper Press. In 2020, he collaborated with poet Marc Nair to conduct a literary tour of Yishun, entitled Uncanny Yishun, as part of #BuySingLit2020. As part of a collaboration with the National Library Board, he runs an online panel show called Head-2-Head, which features Singapore writers discussing the multi-layered themes within their works. He is interested in everyday life and the ritual of living, as well as the representation of Eurasians in Singapore and the complexities of Catholicism.

MOONLIGHT MEMORY
EugInia Tan

EugInia Tan is a Singaporean writer who writes poetry, creative non-fiction and plays. She enjoys cross-pollinating art into multidisciplinary platforms and reviving stories. Her piece was filmed by Ziggy Zigg Zand features music composed by Tan Ming Yong.

UNMASK ME
Gemma Pereira

Gemma Pereira is an English Language and Literature Teacher and an active advocate for the Literary Arts. Her writing has been published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Balik Kampung 2B, Twenty-Four Flavours: Sushi and Best Singapore Short Stories Volume Two. She is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA programme at City University London. Gemma writes about the tension between traditional identities and modern-day environments. She also enjoys performance poetry and believes in the healing power of writing and spoken word.

BUBBLING IN MY CAVE
Heng Siok Tian

Heng Siok Tian has published five personal collections of poetry, and coauthored a book of short stories as well as an anthology of poems. She has written plays and short stories. Widely anthologised, she has also participated inliterary festivals, and was a Fellow at the Iowa International Writing Programme ona National Arts Council Fellowship.In her professional capacity, she hasbeen an educator for 30 years serving invarious roles such as library programmeofficer and media services specialist inMOE Headquarters, as well as a Principal Consultant (English) in a college. She currently teaches Literature in English.

DIAM DIAM (STILL)
Ila

The intimate works of visual and performance artist ila (@@ilailailailaila_) incorporate objects, moving images and live performance. Through weaving imagined narratives into existing realities, she seeks to create alternative nodes of experience and entry points into the peripheries of the unspoken, the tacit and the silenced. Using her body as a space of tension, negotiation and confrontation, her works generate discussion about gender, history and identity in relation to pressing contemporary issues. She writes short speculative proseon @myheartisanelephant, an ongoing project about the city titled pura-pura parade. Her work has been shown at The Substation, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, National Design Centre, Coda Culture, and ArtScience Museum.

WHAT I GAINED FROM CORONAVIRUS
Kevin Wong

Kelvin Wong is a full-time student who likes to think of it as part-time. He has won awards in fields ranging from poetry to ballroom dance. In his spare time, he has written and acted in two musicals for charity, Now You Simi 2 in 2017, and HAVEN in 2019, and is currently working on his third (and fourth and fifth). Kelvin has recently begun collaborating with musicians across the globe, contributing his voice and lyrics to hip-hop albums. His rap persona "Law Sku Boi" has received high praise both locally and internationally, performing for events such as SMU Law Night 2018: Nova. Whether it’s busking along Orchard Road, dancing in Victoria Theatre or staging a full musical in someone’s livingroom, he is constantly pursuing new stages to continue to develop himself.

TELLING
Nabilah Said

Nabilah Said is a playwright, editor, theatre critic, and poet. She has won awards for her plays Inside Voices (2019, VAULT Festival, London), which is published by Nick Hern Books; and ANGKAT: A Definitive, Alternative, Reclaimed Narrative of a Native (2019, M1 Singapore Fringe Festival), which was awarded Best Original Script at the 2020 Life Theatre Awards. She is the founder of playwright collective Main Tulis Group, and co-founder of theatre collective Rupa co.lab. Her poems and short stories have been published in anthologies by Math Paper Press, Ethos Books and Landmark Books. A former journalist with The Straits Times, Nabilah is currently the editor of regional arts website ArtsEquator. She has an MA in Writing for Performance from Goldsmiths, University of London.

WILL WE HAVE RAINBOWS
Pranamika Subhalaxmi

Pranamika Subhalaxmi is a writer and musician who has been taking part in the Singaporean poetry scene for longer than she’s allowed to say. She performed at Singapore Night Festival 2017 and has been part of spoken word events such as destination:INKand Speakeasy. Her works have been published in Math Paper Press’ SingPoWriMo 2018: The Anthology. In 2018, she featured in Neighborhood’s creative residency programme People’s Studio, and also performed at Jaipur Literature Festival in Adelaide, Australia. She is currently working as head programmer for Perspectives Film Festival and on completing her degree in Communication Studies.

COVID CLUSTER IN A SHOPPING MALL
Robert Yeo

Robert Yeo is best known for his poems and plays, published in The Singapore Trilogy (plays) and The Best of Robert Yeo (poems). He has also written in other genres, including essays and libretto for opera; and edited anthologies of Singapore short stories. His most recent work is the play The Eye of History (2016). Volume 1 of his memoir, Routes: A Singaporean Memoir 1940–75, was published in 2011.

NEVER BEFORE
Samantha (Sam) Toh

Samantha (Sam) Toh’s fiction, poetry, translations and criticism have been published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Cha, Spittoon Literary Magazine, and various Math Paper Press and Epigram anthologies. The recipient of a Singapore National Arts Council Golden Point Award and the Stanford University Alumni Arts Grant, Sam works with tins of paint. She writes and makes art miscellaneously in Singapore (always) and Tokyo (pre-COVID-19). Her dream is to become an underaged male K-pop rapper. However, she is already overaged.

Survival Mode
Tasfia

Tasfia is an internationally acclaimed Singaporean-Bangladeshi spoken word artist and poet. During the day, she works in climate innovation, helping to make cities more liveable and sustainable. With her poet hat on, she writes about home, healing, the struggles of womanhood, and the climate crisis. She will be launching and convening a new poetry open mic in Singapore, Wild Poets’ Den, which aims to create an alcohol-free, inclusive space for youth and spoken word enthusiasts to share their creative pieces. She is a former Australian Poetry Slam Victorian State Finalist (2017) and YODA Spoken Word Champion (2018). She was also part of the winning slam teams representing Singapore in the Causeway Exchange Slam in 2018 and 2019. Her poems have been published in the Fight Evil with Poetry anthology, Mahogany Journal and The ArcticCircle's Artists & Climate Change blog.

GHAZAL FOR SUFFERING ON THE TELEVISION
David Wong Hsien Ming

David discovered poetry as a child at a Sunday lunch. His work explores the dualities and contradictions of being, and has appeared in publications like Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and Mascara Literary Review. His first collection, For the End Comes Reaching (2015) is a meditation on the sense of loss that accompanies each having.

LULLABY FOR ASHER WHO WOULDN’T SLEEP DURING A PANDEMIC (OR ANY OTHER TIME)
Balli Kaur Jaswal

Balli is the author of four novels, including Singapore Literature Prize finalist Sugarbread, and the international best seller Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, which was a selection of Reese Witherspoon's book club. Her debut novel Inheritance won the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelist award. Balli’s non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan.com, Harper's Bazaar India and Salon.com, among other publications. Her latest novel The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters was released last year, and is now available in paperback. Her current projects include another novel, consulting on a screenplay adaptation and trying to get her son to sleep.

PLAYING SOLITAIRE
Felix Cheong

Felix is the author of 16 books across different genres, including poetry, short stories, flash fiction and children’s picturebooks. His works have been widely anthologised, as well as nominated for the prestigious Frank O’Connor Award and the Singapore Literature Prize. More recently,his libretto for opera, At One Time, was one of three finalists in the New Opera Singapore Open Call for Composition competition. His latest book of poetry, Oddballs, Screwballs and Other Eccentrics, will be published in September. Conferred the Young Artist Award in 2000 by the National Arts Council, Felix hasbeen invited to writers’ festivals all over theworld, such as Edinburgh, Austin, Sydney,Christchurch, and Hong Kong. He holds amasters in creative writing and is anassociate lecturer with Murdoch University,University of Newcastle, Curtin University,and the National University of Singapore.

ZOOM ROOM
May Seah

May is the author of The Movie That No One Saw, a finalist for the 2018 Epigram Books Fiction Prize. In her career as aculture and lifestyle journalist, she has written for TODAY and The Straits Times, and currently writes for ChannelNewsAsia’s digital platform, CNA Lifestyle. Highlights of her professional careerin clude sitting in Sheldon’s spot on the setof The Big Bang Theory, training to be a Kpopstar in Seoul, being asked by Chow Yun-Fat for a selfie, listening to Sir David Attenborough tell her about the reproductive habits of Algerian jirds, and winning a spicy fried chicken eating competition.

'INAPPROPRIATE LAUGHING KIDS'
Nessa Anwar

Nessa has written, acted, produced, and directed for theatre, television and video. A journalist by day, Nessa began acting first with companies like Singapore Repertory Theatre's Young Company and Teater Ekamatra. She graduated in Philosophy from the National University of Singapore, studying playwriting and screenwriting under Huzir Sulaiman and Wee Li Lin respectively. She produced and presented a 24-episode biker travel series on YouTube called InstaScram. Her first full-length play, Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain, was staged underCheckpoint Theatre and WILD Rice, and her second play, Rumah Dayak, was the inaugural production of Rupa co.lab, a theatre collective which she co-founded.She is a founding member of playwright collective Main Tulis Group and a regular contributor to the Singapore Writers Festival in recent years.

ANECHOIC CHAMBER
Margaret Devadason

Margaret Devadason is a Singaporean poet, currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree at Nanyang Technological University in Linguistics and Multilingual Studies, with a second major in English, and minors in Creative Writing and Gender and Diversity. Shortlisted for the 2018 National Poetry Competition and the winner of the 2018 NTU Creative Writing Competition, Margaret contributed the winning piece ofthe 2019 Hawker Prize to the journal OF ZOOS. Margaret’s work has appeared injournals including We Are A Website and OF ZOOS, and anthologies including Contour: A lyric cartography of Singapore, Seven Hundred Lines, and Food Republic. Margaret is also an active chorister and lacemaker, with a particular interest inhistorical reconstruction.

DOOMSCROLLIN’
Deborah Emmanuel

Deborah is a Singaporean poet, performer and professional speaker. As a slam poet, she has won competitions in Singapore, Germany and Australia. Her work has been privileged to be at the Barcelona International Poetry Festival, Q Berlin Questions and TEDx Singapore, and she has been invited as a resident to esteemed places like The Watermill Centre in NY and Literarisches Colloquium Berlin. Deborahhas written When I Giggle In My Sleep(2015), Rebel Rites (2016) and Genesis Visual Poetry Collection (2018). When not writing or performing poetry, she makes music with Mantravine, Wobology and Kiat; teaches workshops; paints and illustrates; devises independent theatre; and travels to other dimensions.