Dear Reader, I realised something was wrong with Singapore’s society when I started volunteering at Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) nearly a decade ago. I was then a botak army boy who ironically finally had free time on the weekends. Volunteering with case work and research at TWC2, I was jolted out of my middle-class insouciance by the visceral scale of injustice meted with impunity upon our migrant workers. Kafkaesque non-resolution of insurance claims and labour disputes, forced repatriation and debt bondage, rampant wage theft and job scams upon an already pittance of a wage, a ..read more

Dear Reader, I am inspired by the commitment of young activists that I meet. They are more articulate, better informed and educated and braver than I was at their age. I am hopeful for the future of our civil society.   Civil society, the term, the concept itself, is difficult for many people to understand. In Singapore, we seldom talk of a civil society, because of the suppression of independent action, because of our early history, when the law was used to silence civil society, because of the limit inflicted on our freedom of expression. As a result of this history many Singapore ..read more

Dear Reader, Every day, the world seems to be collapsing a little more. Death and destruction rule our screens, and this haunts my every day, though when I look outside my windows all remains still, sunny, sterile. What Cherian George calls an air-conditioned nation I call Omelas; this is a city that succeeds precisely because it crushes the underclass and ravages land from other nations.    While this letter is by no means an essay to get into the metaphor of Singapore as Omelas, I do want to consider what it means to walk away. There are many Singaporeans who literally leave (if n ..read more

Comings and goings Dear Reader, This past December, I started my new role as editor at Ethos Books. As I took a seat at the table for my first team meeting, I found myself stifling, unexpectedly, a smile. Almost four years ago, I had sat at this exact table when I visited the Ethos office for the very first time. It was early January in 2020, before things began going south. That morning, I had woken up to realise with horror that I had lost my voice.   The loss was complete. I could not so much as croak. The day before, I had screamed my lungs out at USS with an old friend who was visi ..read more

Dear Reader, As we see the year out, we've rounded up the reads accompanying us as we bid farewell to 2023, and open a new chapter with 2024. Should you pick them up, may they likewise gird you for the road ahead. Love, Cass ------------ Kah Gay's Read I was on the second floor of Wardah Books when Ibrahim the bookshop owner pointed me to From a Shore Beyond Water by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore. Ibrahim is friend to the family of the deceased poet, and had brought in the book directly from the United States. The poetry book now sits on my bedside table, continuing its curious journey that st ..read more

Recording of Teh Tarik with Walid IRL: Independent Art Spaces with Fong Hoe Fang, Prashant Somosundram Walid: Independent spaces - what does it mean? I am glad that we are here to talk about it in an independent space—well, independent enough, hopefully, and we will discuss exactly what that means. So welcome to episode 64 of Teh Tarik with Walid, and the second one that we are doing Teh Tarik with Walid In Real Life, so I am delighted to have two very special guests today. Two legends, you can say, in this space. And the first is Mr Fong Hoe Fang. I don’t know how many of you know this—I mea ..read more

The Ethos Books family, past and present, at the Media Preview for 2024's titles   Dear reader, You are part of the Ethos family, and I would like to provide more context to the departures, as well as my publishing plans for the new year, which I had shared with our authors in earlier correspondence. The six wonderful colleagues who have left Ethos Books for other shores at the end of last month are Ariane, Arin, Ben, Glen, Jen and Wei Lin. I paid tribute to them at the opening of our Festive Sale on 1 December, at the close of our Media Preview Night. Some of them left because ..read more

Recording of Ways to Love Singapore Ways to Love Singapore took place at Dakota Dreams on 16 July, Sunday. You can watch the recording above and access the full transcript of the programme on this page. Portions of the transcript have been edited for clarity.  ? What does it mean to love a country and why does it matter? Join pioneer civil society activist Constance Singam in conversation with author and playwright Alfian Sa'at as they explore national identity, discuss their unique relationship with Singapore across the decades, and share their takes o ..read more

This is an edited extract from Nine Yard Sarees. Nine Yard Sarees is a multigenerational portrait of a fictional Tamil Brahmin family. Comprising eleven interlinked stories, this short story cycle traces the lives of nine women from 1950 all the way to 2019, shedding light on the community and its evolution through the decades. As the stories take us from India to Singapore, Australia and even America, we follow the experiences of the women in the family: Raji the matriarch who lives in seclusion at an ashram; her daughter Padma who struggles to raise her family the traditional way; Pad ..read more

Prasanthi and I, after we conducted a fiction workshop for Writing the City, July 2019. Dear Reader, It was only about five years ago that I was sitting in libraries and cafes with Prasanthi Ram, both of us creative writing postgraduate students working on our respective theses of short stories. I knew back then that Prasanthi’s early drafts of stories would eventually be out in the world and would find homes on the internet and on people’s shelves. I did not know then though, that I would have the privilege of being the editor who would journey with the characters of Nine Yard Sare ..read more