ANNE ABAD is a graduate of Ateneo de Manila University. Her work has appeared in the Philippines Free Press, Damazine, Expanded Horizons, the Philippines Graphic magazine and Singapore’s Quarterly Literary Review. She will also feature in the forthcoming Under the Storm: An Anthology of Contemporary Philippine Poetry.

UMA ANYAR is the pen name of photographer Tamarra Kaida. In 1988 she collaborated on The Other Side of the House with Pulitzer-Prize-winner Rita Dove. Her own book of short stories and photographs, Tremors from the Faultline, was published in 1989. Tamarra moved to Bali in 2004 where she writes short stories, reviews books for the Ubud Readers’ and Writers’ Festival, and is finishing her first novel, Matthew and Matilda – A photographic ghost story.

JULIAN BAGGINI is editor and co-founder of The Philosophers’ Magazine. He is the author of several books, including Welcome to Everytown: A Journey into the English Mind (Granta) and Complaint (Profile).

PRIYA BASIL was born in London to Indian parents. Her English-sounding surname resulted from a clerical error made in the 1940s in India, from where her grandparents migrated to East Africa. A slip of the pen and Bansil became Basil: a fragrant herbal legacy bestowed. Priya, raised in Kenya, lives in London and Berlin. Her second novel, The Obscure Logic of the Heart, was published in June. Her first, Ishq and Mushq, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

JOHN BATTEN is a curator, writer and critic on art, culture and urban planning and a former art gallery owner. Born in Melbourne, he has lived in Hong Kong since 1992. He is an organiser of the annual charity event Hong Kong ArtWalk and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Australian art magazine Broadsheet. He is Art Editor of the Asia Literary Review.

TEW BUNNAG was born in Bangkok and studied Chinese and Economics at Cambridge University. After graduation, he spent seven years travelling around the world. In 1975 he became a t’ai chi and meditation teacher. Since 2000 he has been working for the Human Development Foundation in the slums of Bangkok. His published works of fiction include Fragile Days, After the Wave, and The Naga’s Journey. A new novel, The Curtain of Rain, is in progress.

MEIRA CHAND, born in London of Indian-Swiss antecedents, has lived in Japan and India and now resides in Singapore. She is the author of eight novels, the latest, A Different Sky, having been published last year. She is an Associate of The Centre for the Arts, National University of Singapore and from 2000 to 2002 acted as Chairperson for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

HA KIET CHAU from Sacramento, California, is a writer of poetry and short stories who has been published in Asia and the United States. She is a graduate student at San Francisco State University, studying creative writing with an emphasis on poetry. She was nominated for the Best New Poets anthology of 2011 and is now working on a collection of verse. Ha Kiet teaches art and literature in Oakland.

O THIAM CHIN’s short stories have appeared in Asia Literary Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Kyoto Journal, The Jakarta Post, Cha, Karavan and Qarrtsiluni. He is the author of two story collections, Free-Falling Man and Never Been Better (nominated for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award 2010). His new fiction collection, Under The Sun, will be published this year.

CHANDRAHAS CHOUDHURY is the author of the novel Arzee the Dwarf and the editor of the anthology India: A Traveller’s Literary Companion. He lives in Mumbai.

JESSE CHUN’s fine art photography has been exhibited in the US, Hong Kong and South Korea, and has featured in publications including ARTnow and Elle magazine Hong Kong. Chun received a BFA in photography at Parsons School of Design in New York in 2006, and has guest lectured at NYU, Columbia University and Parsons. She lives in Seoul where she works as a photographer and a curator.

BERNARD COHEN is the author of four novels and a children’s picture book. He has won numerous awards, including the 1996 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for The Blindman’s Hat. In 2006 he founded The Writing Workshop, which runs face-to-face and online writing courses for children. Since establishing the workshop he has taught creative writing to more than 12,000 young people from five to 18.

LIZZIE COLLINGHAM is the author of The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food and Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors. Having taught history at Warwick University she became a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge. She is now an independent scholar and writer.

ROBBIE COREY-BOULET covered the trial of S-21 prison commandant Kaing Guek Eav (Duch) while working as a reporter for The Phnom Penh Post. He continues to monitor the Khmer Rouge tribunal in the Cambodian capital in his new role as news editor. He hails from University Place, Washington, northwest United States.

LOUIS de BERNIÈRES is the author of worldwide best-seller Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. His other award-winning fiction includes the novels Birds Without Wings, The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord and A Partisan’s Daughter, and the short-story collection Notwithstanding. His situations have included motorcycle messenger, car mechanic, landscape gardener, teacher and cowboy. He lives in Norfolk, England.

FRANK DIKÖTTER is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Professor of History on leave from the University of London. He has pioneered the use of Chinese archival sources and published seven books on the history of modern China, from The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992) to The Age of Openness: China before Mao (2007). Mao’s Great Famine will be his eighth. He is married and lives in Hong Kong.

TISHANI DOSHI is a writer and dancer. She has a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from John Hopkins University. Her book of poems, Countries of the Body, won the Forward Prize for best first collection and her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury and Penguin India.

FUCHSIA DUNLOP, from Oxford, is a cook and food writer specialising in Chinese cuisine. She trained as a chef at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine and is the author of three books, including the award winners Sichuan Cookery and Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: a Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China. She has also written for publications including the Financial Times, The New Yorker, Gourmet and Saveur.

MARJORIE EVASCO writes in two languages: Cebuano-Visayan and English. Her two books, Dreamweavers and Ochre Tones, have each won the National Book Award for Poetry awarded by the Manila Critics’ Circle. Her poetry is published in various anthologies and she has participated in numerous literary festivals including WordFeast in Singapore, the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival, and the XVIII International Poetry Festival of Medellín in Colombia.

British historian FELIPE FERNÁNDEZ-ARMESTO is the author of numerous acclaimed volumes of non-fiction, including Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food; 1492: The Year Our World Began; Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed; and Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration. He is William P. Reynolds Professor of History at Notre Dame University, Indiana.

VICTORIA FINLAY is the author of Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox and Jewels: A Secret History. She studied Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews before working at Reuters for three years. She then spent 12 years at newspapers in Hong Kong – five as Arts Editor of the South China Morning Post – where she also co-presented the weekly literary radio programme The Listening Ear. She returned to Britain in 2003.

LIAM FITZPATRICK was born in Hong Kong and educated at King George V School, Hong Kong and Christ Church, Oxford. His poetry has been collected in Vs: 12 Hong Kong Poets and City Voices: Hong Kong Writing in English, 1945 to the Present. He is married with two daughters, lives in Hong Kong and works as a writer and editor for Time magazine.

PAUL FONOROFF, from Cleveland, began studying Mandarin at school. After his master’s degree in cinema studies he researched Chinese cinema at Beijing University. He has lived in Hong Kong since 1983 and been a South China Morning Post film critic for 23 years. He has appeared in more than 1,000 television programmesand played cameo roles in 20 movies.

NIGHAT M. GANDHI is a writer and professional mental health counsellor. She grew up in Dhaka and Karachi. After attending college in the US, she married and moved to Allahabad, India, where she raised her two daughters and became involved in women’s rights activism. She writes for Indian and Pakistani newspapers including the Hindu, Hindustan Times and Dawn. ‘Trains’, which appears in this issue of Asia Literary Review, is taken from Ghalib At Dusk & Other Stories, forthcoming from Tranquebar Press in September 2009.

CHRISSIE GITTINS’ prize-winning poetry has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, for which she also writes plays. Her poetry collections are Armature and I’ll Dress One Night as You. Her short-story collection is titled Family Connections. All three of her children’s poetry collections were Poetry Book Society Choices for the Children’s Poetry Bookshelf. Originally from Lancashire, she now lives in London.

http://www.chrissiegittins.co.uk

PHILIP GOSTELOW is an award-winning photographer from Perth, Australia. His work has been published in Time, the Independent on Sunday Review, Figaro and Condé Nast Traveler and has been featured at the Noorderlicht Photo Festival in the Netherlands. His project, Visible, Now – The Fragility of Childhood is published as an e-book, and his Black Christmas Bushfire Series is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Philip is also a journalist, and is currently involved in the production of a short film and other documentary projects.

HAO QUN, from northeast China, studied law before working as a cosmetics company human resources manager. Murong Xuecun was Hao’s pseudonym on the publicly accessible company blog followed by millions of readers. His novel Leave Me Alone: Chengdu was nominated for the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize. The Missing Ingredient won the 2010 People’s Literature Prize for exposing pyramid schemes.

JUSTINE HARDY has covered the conflict in Kashmir since it began in 1989. She is a journalist, writer and aid worker, and divides her time between London, Delhi and Kashmir. Three of her six books are about the troubled valley: Goat, The Wonder House, a novel, and her latest, In the Valley of Mist, which will be published in June 2009. She works with a conflict resolution project in Kashmir, addressing the psychiatric damage caused by the fighting.

JUSTIN HILL has been likened to George Orwell, a boxer and Tolstoy. His acclaimed first novel, The Drink and Dream Teahouse, won the 2003 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, a 2002 Betty Trask Award and was banned by the Chinese government. His second novel, Passing Under Heaven, won the 2005 Somerset Maugham Award. Shieldwall, the first of his Conquest Trilogy, chronicling the momentous events surrounding the Battle of Hastings, was published in May 2011.

ISABEL HILTON is an author, broadcaster, documentary maker and founder of www.chinadialogue.net, a bilingual Chinese-English website devoted to climatic and environmental problems. She studied Chinese at Edinburgh University and in 1973 became one of the first British students to study in China. Hilton has worked as a journalist at The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Guardian and The New Yorker, and on BBC radio.

STEVEN HIRST was born in Yorkshire, England, and has worked in Chengdu, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, where he is based. After reading English at Oxford University he worked as assistant director to Alan Ayckbourn at the Old Vic in London and the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. He studied creative writing at Hong Kong University and has been a language tutor to several renowned Chinese actors.

VIKI HOLMES is a prize-winning British poet and performer who began her writing career in Cardiff. She has been living in Hong Kong since 2005. Her work has been published in Hong Kong, Wales, England, Australia, Canada, Macau and Singapore. Her first collection was titled Miss Moon’s Class and she was co-editor of Not a Muse, an anthology of women’s writing.

PEAULADD HUY was born in Phnom Penh. She was eight when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975. In 1980, after her parents had been murdered by the regime, she emigrated to the United States with siblings and other relatives. Her work has been published by Blue Begonia Press, Cha and Nou Hach. She hopes to return to Cambodia with her family.

JAINA SANGA grew up in Mumbai and moved to the US as a student. After receiving a PhD in English she taught English and Cultural Studies for several years. She is the author of a book of criticism of Salman Rushdie’s fiction and the editor of two volumes on south Asian literature. Her fiction has appeared in the Asia Literary Review, Epiphany and Carpe Articulum. She lives in Dallas and travels to India frequently.

JOHN JAVELLANA is a freelance photographer based in Manila. He began working as a wedding photographer in 2007 and was invited to shoot for Reuters in 2008, all while still at college. He became a regular contractor for the agency, covering major news stories. He is now completing various personal projects with a view to more documentary work. His photographs have been published worldwide.

KAVITA JINDAL was born in India and has lived in both Hong Kong and England. Her work is fuelled by observations made in these three distinct landscapes and societies. Her poetry collection, Raincheck Renewed (Chameleon Press) was published in 2004 to critical acclaim. Her poems have been translated into German, Romanian and Punjabi, and her writing has appeared in The Independent, The Mechanics’ Institute Review, Dimsum, Asian Cha and In Our Own Words.

GARY JONES is a British journalist based in Shanghai. Focusing on human-interest and behind-the-news features, he has contributed words and pictures to numerous publications worldwide, including Time magazine, The Times and The Sunday Times of London, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, British GQ and the South China Morning Post.

MITSUYO KAKUTA was born in Yokohama in 1967. She graduated from Waseda University, majoring in Creative Writing. She is the author of more than forty books and is one of Japan’s most prolific writers. She has won nine major literary awards in her home country, including the prestigious Naoki Prize for the novel Woman on the Other Shore and the Chuo Koron Literary Prize for The Eighth Day, both published by Kodansha International.

MIN K. KANG was born in Busan, South Korea. She has lived in the United States since 1996 and now resides in San Francisco. She is a graduate of Texas A&M University, College Station and is pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing at San Francisco State University.

TIPPAPHON KEOPASEUT is the owner of the Book-Café Vientiane bookshop, Laos, and joint owner of Lao Insight Books, an English/French publishing house that publishes books exclusively about Laos. Political affiliation: never mind the principles, stick to the Party. Literate, likes pho noodles and shoes.

JAMES KIDD, based in London, writes for The Independent on Sunday, the South China Morning Post, The Observer, Time Out, The Jerusalem Post, The Daily Telegraph, The London Magazine and Square Meal magazine. He is a member of the advisory board of the Asia House Festival of Asian Literature in London. He wrote the introduction for the 20th-anniversary edition of Patricia Cornwell’s debut novel, Postmortem (2010). 

KIM CHENG BOEY was born in Singapore and is now an Australian citizen teaching at the University of Newcastle. He has published four books of poetry: Somewhere-Bound, Another Place, Days of No Name and After the Fire. A collection of personal essays, Between Stations, will be published by Giramondo this year.

EUGENIA KIM is the daughter of Korean parents who journeyed to America after the Pacific War. She has published short stories and essays in journals and anthologies, including Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writings, and is an MFA graduate of Bennington College. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and son. ‘The Daughter of the Woman from Nah-jin’ in this issue of Asia Literary Review is taken from her first novel, The Calligrapher’s Daughter, forthcoming from Henry Holt and Company.

MARK KITTO is the author of China Cuckoo, How I Lost a Fortune and Found a Life in China and a columnist with Britain’s Prospect magazine, for which his brief is to “illustrate the big picture of China with anecdotes from rural life”. He runs a coffee shop in a disused brothel in Moganshan, a mountain resort near Shanghai and is rarely short of material. He used to be a magazine publisher.

RAMONA KOVAL presents The Book Show, on ABC Radio National Australia, which can also be heard at www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow. She is the author of a cookbook, Jewish Cooking, Jewish Cooks, a novel, Samovar, and several non-fiction books. A collection of her literary interviews, Speaking Volumes: Conversations with Remarkable Writers, is forthcoming from Scribe in August.

ANDREW LAM is a writer and an editor with New America Media. His book of essays, Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora, won the PEN/Beyond Margins Award, 2006. His collection of short stories, Birds of Paradise, is due out in 2010 and he is working on a novel. He was featured in the documentary My Journey Home, which aired on PBS nationwide in the US on April 7, 2004, in which a film crew followed him back to his homeland, Vietnam.

WAYNE P LAMMERS taught Japanese Language and Literature for a number of years before becoming an independent translator and writer. In 2007 he introduced Japanese writer Mitsuyo Kakuta to the English-speaking world with the novel Woman on the Other Shore. Along with contemporary Japanese fiction, his work has included translations of classical romance, memoirs, stage plays, screenplays and subtitles, manga, and a manga guide to Japanese grammar. He lives near Portland, Oregon.

WENDY LAW-YONE, a native of Burma, was born in Mandalay. She grew up in Rangoon, and lived in Thailand, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur before settling in the United States, where she published two novels, The Coffin Tree and Irrawaddy Tango. Following a David TK Wong creative writing fellowship at the University of East Anglia, she moved to the UK in 2005 and now lives in central London. Her latest novel, The Road to Wanting, is forthcoming from Chatto & Windus in April.

JENNIFER 8. LEE is a journalist and the author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. She was one of the youngest reporters employed by The New York Times, where she spent nine years. She is on the boards of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and the Center for Public Integrity. Jennifer graduated from Harvard University in Applied Mathematics and Economics and studied international relations at Beijing University.

LIAO YIWU is a poet, novelist and screenwriter. His collection of interviews, The Corpse Walker: Real-Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up, was published by Pantheon in 2008. Other non-fiction works include Testimonials, The Earthquake Chronicle and Report on China’s Victims of Injustice. In 2003, he received a Human Rights Watch Hellman-Hammett grant and, in 2007, he received a Freedom to Write Award from the Independent Chinese PEN Centre. He lives in Sichuan Province.

SHIRLEY GEOK-LIN LIM’s first collection, Crossing the Peninsula, received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. She has published six other volumes of poetry, three books of short stories, two novels, a collected edition of her fiction and poetry and a memoir, Among the White Moon Faces, which won an American Book Award. She is a Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Shirley hails from Malacca.

BERTIL LINTNER is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and is currently Asia correspondent for the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, as well as a contributor to Asia Times Online, Hong Kong and Jane’s Information Group in Britain. He has written seven books on Burma, including Outrage: Burma’s Struggle for Democracy; Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948 and Land of Jade: A Journey Through Insurgent Burma.

LIU HONGBIN, his work banned by the Chinese authorities, lives in exile and is not permitted to return to China. His poems were among those that provoked the authorities ahead of the massacre in Tiananmen Square. Praised by some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, Liu has read to distinguished audiences worldwide and his work has been widely translated. Recent collections include Poetry in Exile (2006) and Un jour dans les jours (2008).

LUO HUI has pursued literary studies in China, the United States and Canada, earning degrees in English, Comparative Literature and Chinese. He is interested in contemporary uses of the past and literary translation, avant-garde poetry and independent film, among other cultural media. He has translated CBC documentaries and books of poetry, including Wings of Summer by Zheng Danyi. He lives in New Zealand. 

MA THIDA is a Burmese writer and medical doctor who has won numerous human-rights awards. In 1993 she was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment but was released in 1999 with help from Amnesty International and PEN. Since then she has published widely and taught at Brown and Harvard universities in the United States. She recently returned to Rangoon, where she writes, edits and practises at a free clinic.

PAUL STJOHN MACKINTOSH is a British poet, writer and journalist living in Hong Kong. His first poetry collection, The Golden Age, was published by Bellew Books in 1997, and his second, The Musical Box of Wonders, is forthcoming from H Harksen Productions. He has published English translations from Japanese and Romanian and, working with his wife, Hungarian film-maker Lilla Anna Ban, is an award-winning film producer.

NIKI MARANGOU was born in Limmasol, Cyprus, in 1948. She studied sociology in West Berlin, worked for ten years at the State Theatre of Cyprus, and since 1980 has run the Kochlias Bookshop in Nicosia, where she now lives. She has published books of prose, poetry and children’s fairy tales. In 1998 she was awarded the Cavafy Prize for Poetry in Alexandria. Her paintings have been widely exhibited.

Photographer RICK MARTIN is based in Adelaide. His exhibitions have included Golden Palace at Tadu Contemporary Art Gallery, Bangkok; Helpers at the Ayala Museum, Manila; and Breathtaking: A Passage on the Titanic at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia. He has been artist in residence at studios around the world. The Cha Chan Teng series evolved from 2000 to 2002 at restaurants throughout Hong Kong.

FIONNUALA MCHUGH was born in England, lived in Northern Ireland for 10 years, began travelling to Asia as a journalist in 1986 and has been based in Hong Kong since 1993. Her work appears in many publications and will also feature in Sunrise on the Southbound Sleeper, a Daily Telegraph-commissioned anthology of railway travel for which she ventured from Hong Kong to Lhasa.

ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA has published four books of poems, most recently The Transfiguring Places (1998). He edited The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets (1992), An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English (2003), The Last Bungalow (2007), and The Boatride and Other Poems (2009). The Absent Traveller (1991), a volume of translations, has been recently reprinted. He is currently undertaking a translation of Kabir, the fifteenth-century Indian mystic poet, to be published by the New York Review of Books.

MARTIN MERZ was raised in Australia, studying Chinese Language and Literature at Melbourne University before heading to Asia. After two decades in China trade he earned an MA in Applied Translation from Hong Kong’s Open University. He has translated folk tale Mulian Rescues His Mother and co-translated, with Jane Weizhen Pan, Wang Gang’s novel English, Li Yu’s opera Ordained by Heaven and Li Er’s short-story collection The Magician of 1919.

Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, REID MITCHELL, from New Orleans, has spent much of his time in Hong Kong and China. A historian and fiction writer, he has taught at Jiangnan University in Wuxi and now teaches at Huaqiao University in Quanzhou. Mitchell's poetry has been published in The Pedestal Magazine, Mascara Literary Review, Poetry Macao, Softblow and elsewhere.

GOENAWAN MOHAMAD, from Batang, Central Java, has written four volumes of poetry, four non-fiction books on literature and philosophy, seven volumes of essays, three opera librettos, two plays and two scripts for the Javanese puppet theatre. His forthcoming publications are Don Quixote and other Poems and Towards an Aesthetics of Rest. He is the founder of cultural organisation the Utan Kayu Community.

PALANI MOHAN was born in Chennai, India, moved to Australia as a child and lives in Malaysia. His photography has featured in many of the world’s leading magazines and newspapers. He has published three books, the latest being Vanishing Giants: Elephants of Asia and has won a number of international awards.

MARSHALL MOORE is the author of the novel The Concrete Sky (Haworth Press, 2003) and two short-story collections, Black Shapes in a Darkened Room (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2004) and The Infernal Republic (Ignavia Press, 2009). A native of the American South, he now lives and works in Hong Kong.

THOMAS R. MOORE’s poems have appeared in The Worcester Review, College English, Wolf Moon Journal, The Café Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Flint Hills Review, Naugatuck River Review, Off the Coast and Words and Images. His poem ‘Calving in Te Awamutu’ received First Prize in the 2009 Naugatuck River Review narrative poetry contest. He has taught in Iran and Istanbul. He lives in Maine, United States.

SARAH MURRAY is the author of Making an Exit: From the Magnificent to the Macabre, How We Dignify the Dead and Moveable Feasts: From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century, the Incredible Journeys of the Food We Eat. She is an established Financial Times contributor. Born in Dorset, Britain, she lives in New York City.

CHANDRAN NAIR is the founder and CEO of the Global Institute for Tomorrow (GIFT), an independent social-venture think tank dedicated to increasing awareness of the impact of globalisation. He is the Chairman of Avantage Ventures, an advisory company in the field of social investing. He is also the author of Consumptionomics: Asia’s Role in Reshaping Capitalism and Saving the Planet.

NGUYEN QUI DUC is the author of Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family (1994), and the co-editor of Vietnam: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (1995) and Once Upon A Dream, the Vietnamese American Experience (1995). He is the translator of the novella Behind the Red Mist by Ho Anh Thai (1997) and of The Time Tree: Poems by Huu Thinh (2004).

J.P. O’MALLEY, from Dublin, works as a freelance arts journalist in London. He has written for The Sunday Times, New Statesman, The Economist, the Irish Examiner, Sunday Business Post, Verbal Arts Magazine, thequietus.com, culturenorthernireland.org and The Big Issue, among other publications.

JANE WEIZHEN PAN, a native speaker of Mandarin and Cantonese, holds an MA in translation studies from Monash University and taught translation at RMIT University. She co-translated Wang Gang’s novel English, Li Er’s short-story collection The Magician of 1919 and the Li Yu opera Ordained by Heaven with Martin Merz and is working on Cantonese and Mandarin translations of a puppet-show script of Alice in Wonderland.

JACK PICONE is an Australian-born editorial and documentary photographer based in Bangkok. He has spent more than 20 years working in scores of countries, including some of the world’s most dangerous, such as Israel, Angola, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia. He has won several of photojournalism’s most prestigious awards and conducts The Jack Picone Photography Workshops.

Singapore-born American novelist WENA POON is the author of Lions in Winter, The Proper Care of Foxes, Alex y Robert and The Biophilia Omnibus. Her work has been serialised by BBC Radio, performed in a Roman amphitheatre in France and is to be staged by London’s Bush Theatre. She won the 2010 Willesden Herald International Short Story Prize and has been nominated for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Singapore Literature Prize.

G.B. PRABHAT is the author of two novels, Chains (2000) and Eimona (2006). He has published short stories in newspapers The Hindu and The Indian Express. His stories have also been translated into Telugu and Hindi. Prabhat is the founder and CEO of Anantara Solutions, a consulting and outsourcing company. He lives with his family in Chennai, India.

KATE ROGERS’ poetry has been published in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canada, the US and Britain, in Many Mountains Moving, Dimsum, Pressed, The New Quarterly, Contemporary Verse II, Canadian Woman Studies, The Mad Woman in the Academy and Orbis International. She is co-editor of the international women’s poetry anthology Not A Muse and has published a collection, Painting the Borrowed House.

SANDIP ROY is a journalist and radio-show host based in San Francisco. He is a New America Media editor and a commentator on National Public Radio. An immigrant from India, he writes regularly for ethnic and mainstream media in the US and India and blogs for The Huffington Post. His work has been included in anthologies such as Contours of the Heart, Story-Wallah, The Phobic and the Erotic, Desilicious and Mobile Cultures.

ANNA SAA-FELICIANO graduated with a B.A. from the University of Santo Tomas in her hometown of Manila. An English instructor, she is also undertaking an M.A. in English Language and Literature Teaching at the Ateneo de Manila University. She presented an academic paper at the 15th Conference of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE) in Cebu, Philippines, last October.

RON SCHAFRICK completed an M.A. in English Literature (Creative Writing) at Concordia University in Montreal, then spent nine years working as an English as a Second Language (ESL) instructor at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul. Now living in Toronto, he is working on a collection of short stories, many reflecting his experiences in South Korea. His stories have appeared in The Dalhousie Review, The Prairie Journal and The Antigonish Review.

DEVAN SCHWARTZ is a graphic novelist and freelance journalist who has worked as a human-rights reporter in Southeast Asia. He is enrolled on the Portland State University MFA programme in the United States and is writing his first literary novel, The Disunion of Hope. His work has appeared in New Plains Review, Rio Grande Review and Street Roots.

CLARISSA SEBAG-MONTEFIORE, from London, is an Associate Editor and the Books Editor with Time Out Beijing. She has lived in China since 2009, during which time her numerous interviewees have included literary figures from Amitav Ghosh to Yan Lianke. She has written for publications including The Guardian, The Observer, New Statesman, Prospect and the South China Morning Post.