‘Even though everything has been arranged in careful accordance with planetary agendas, everybody agrees this is the worst possible time for a wedding.’—Kashmir, 1947. A short story by Kapil Kachru. 

Magical realism and fantasy abound in this month’s column by Ng Yi-Sheng, who shares his line-up of speculative fiction by authors of the Malay diaspora.

SUSPECT Editor-in-Chief Sharmini Aphrodite introduces a new series on Indigenous Realities in Asia with a fieldnote from Sabah, Borneo.

The winning poems of the 12th SUSPECT Poetry Contest offer quiet intimacies, brilliant honesty, and alluring music. 

Though “Christmas is a wish to return only to childhood”, what innocence do children have left? Three poems by Miguel Barretto García.

‘So how can writers of the other rise up to this moment, when the question of who owns the car keys to the narrative matters more than ever?’—Lydia Wei reviews Viet Thanh Nguyen’s To Save and to Destroy (2025).

In these three elemental poems, Ana Morales asks us “to speak of this now and believe, in disruption”.

‘They wanted me to confess. To name my crimes against God.’ A short story by Layla Sabourian.

In the lead-up to Singapore’s National Day, Felix Cheong reviews four SG graphic novels—from the grotesque to the anthropological.

Yap Hao Yang reviews the recent reissue of A Field Guide to Supermarkets in Singapore by Samuel Lee and finds its conceit still fresh and enduring.

'In that mother tongue I had little care for—you’re growing up, hou jai, I can see you’re growing up.'—a short story by Justin Wu.

“foreign eclipses/ are purer, he says, custom-free”. Three poems on reorderings by Sumit Shetty.

A meditation on time by Sabahat Fida.

Stitching together life’s failures, imperfections, and detours: a new story by Pijus Ash.

A wide-ranging and stimulating conversation with Xu Xi, author of the story collection Horizon Hong Kong (Gaudy Boy, July 1, 2026). 

This month marks 250 years since the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence. To mark it, Ng Yi-Sheng takes us through five titles from ‘countries who bled for the Red, White and Blue’.

A short story by Alvin B. Yapan, translated by Christian Jil Benitez, asks a ‘cultural question that has long been posed to the Philippines: is it even possible to have a serial killer here?’

How do you greet the end of the world? A short story by Kannika Claudine Peña.

Fleeting and sticky, the gay men of Mark Cunanan’s new poems move through underworlds.

How do we look at violence? In three new poems, Chimmy Meer shows us through a Filipino crucifixion reenactment, falling cherry blossoms, and a corpse cleanup gone wrong. 

‘Will we rise with the stars, or be washed away by the coming monsoons?’—This May, Ng Yi-Sheng reviews five science fiction titles from the archipelagic Caribbean and Southeast Asia.

‘So we used the cutlass for the cane fields.’—Sharmini Aphrodite speaks to Rajiv Mohabir about coolieness and the plantation in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean.

In these exquisitely lyrical poems, Christian Emecheta reflects on the postcolonial uses of landscape and language. 

A short story by Preeta Samarasan lays bare one of the Malaysian state’s greatest sins.

Cold rain, a kitchen cabinet, and the curl of a tongue: three poems by C. Aishwarya exploring migration and memory between New York and Singapore.

‘They made me sink fully into myself, feel everything that has been lost, every person—named and unnamed by the writers of history—whose life was violently discarded.’—Reading Désirée Reynold’s Seduce (2013), an essay by Olivia Simone.

‘The Tadjah does not disappear. It sediments, creating pores and possibilities of leakage: of values, practices, memories; across language, oceans, borders.’—procession, history and architecture kaleidoscope in Singapore’s Nagore Durgah, in this essay by Samira Hassan. 

Expressing a keen appreciation of the beauty and the damage to our homeland archipelago, Amilcar Peter Sanatan’s poems make us see and hear anew.

SUSPECT Editor-in-Chief Sharmini Aphrodite introduces ARCHIPELAGIC ENTANGLEMENTS, our latest portfolio putting Southeast Asia and the Caribbean in conversation.