THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2026 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT
Featured Authors: Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, Sharmini Aphrodite, Roohi Choudhry, and Jee Leong Koh
Date and time: Saturday, September 26, 4.00-5.30 PM (ET)
Venue: Silvana (300 W 116th St, New York, NY 10026)
Free and open to all. RSVP Jee at jkoh@singaporeunbound.org.
Four Asian authors bring news of the world: Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan, Japan, and South Africa. Yu-Mei Balasingamchow (Names Have Been Changed), Sharmini Aphrodite (The Unrepentant), Roohi Choudhry (Outside Women), and Jee Leong Koh (To the Tune) read from their new books and discuss their writing as it relates to place, identity, migration, and resistance.
Yu-Mei Balasingamchow is the author of Names Have Been Changed. Her short stories have received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and the Mississippi Review Fiction Prize. Originally from Singapore, she lives in Boston. She teaches at GrubStreet and is editor at Gaudy Boy, an independent press that publishes Asian voices.
Sharmini Aphrodite was born in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, and grew up in Johor Bahru. Her short stories and writing on literature, art, and history have appeared online and in print. She is the editor-in-chief of SUSPECT, a journal of Asian literature and art. The Unrepentant, her first long-form publication, is ““destined to become a classic” (Preeta Samarasan).
Roohi Choudhry was born in Pakistan and grew up in southern Africa. Her debut novel, Outside Women (University Press of Kentucky) was described as “riveting… an incisive story of how change happens” by Publishers’ Weekly and was shortlisted for the 2026 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.
Jee Leong Koh is the author of Steep Tea, named a Best Book of the Year by UK's Financial Times and a Finalist by Lambda Literary in the USA. His hybrid work of fiction, Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an insignificant Japanese poet, won the Singapore Literature Prize in English fiction. His new book To the Tune weaves together epistolary poems to Du Fu and protest songs.
