Asian Writers

SINGAPOREAN WRITERS


Russell Lee,- mysterious author of popular True Singapore Ghost Stories series.
Aaron Lee,  poet and lawyer
Gopal Baratham,  neurosurgeon and writer
Boey Kim Cheng,  poet
Colin Cheong,  poet and novelist
Felix Cheong,  poet


Top 5 Thailand Writers



Binlah Sonkalagiri
Binlah Sonkalagiri (Thai: บินหลา สันกาลาคีรี, RTGS: Binla Sankalakhiri) is the pen-name of Thai author Wuthichat Choomsanit (วุฒิชาติ ชุ่มสนิท, born 1965). He won the S.E.A. Write Award in 2005 for his work, Chao Ngin (Princess). Wuthichat graduated high school from Mahavajiravudh Songkhla School in Songkhla Province. He attended the Faculty of Fine Arts at Chulalongkorn University but did not graduate before starting his career as editor-in-chief Pai Yarn Yai, a publication belonging to writer and singer.


Chart Korbjitti
Chart Korbjitti (Thai ชาติ กอบจิตติ, born June 25, 1954 in Samut Sakhon) is a Thai writer. He first came to prominence with the publication of his novel Khamphiphaksa (The Judgment) in 1981. Named as Book of the Year by Thailand's Literature Council, the book won him the S.E.A. Write Award. He received a second S.E.A. Write Award in 1994 for Wela (Time). He was named a National Artist in Literature in 2004, and was among the honorees of the inaugural Silpathorn Award, given to Thai contemporary artists.


Chit Phumisak
Chit Phumisak (Thai: จิตร ภูมิศักดิ์, 25 September 1930 – 5 May 1966) was a Thai author, historian and poet. His most influential book was The Face of Thai Feudalism (โฉมหน้าศักดินาไทย, Chomna Sakdina Thai), written in 1957 under the pseudonym Somsamai Srisootarapan. Other pen names used by Chit include Kawi Kanmuang and Kawi Srisayam. Born into a poor family in Prachinburi Province, eastern Thailand, he studied philology at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.


Hem Vejakorn
Hem Vejakorn (Thai: เหม เวชกร, January 17, 1904, Phra Nakhon, Bangkok – April 16, 1969, Thon Buri, Bangkok) was a Thai artist and writer. He is best known for his illustrations for the covers of 10-satang pulp novels, which have in turn influenced subsequent generations of Thai artists and illustrators. It is estimated that he produced more than 50,000 pieces of art, including pen and pencil drawings, watercolors, posters and oil paintings. He portrayed rural life, Thai history and figures from Thai.


Kanokphong Songsomphan
Kanokphong Songsomphan (Thai: กนกพงศ์ สงสมพันธุ์, February 9, 1966 in Khuan Khanun, Phatthalung Province, Thailand – February 13, 2006 in Nakhon Si Thammarat) was a Thai writer. He was the winner of the S.E.A. Write Award for Thailand in 1996 for his collection of short stories, Phaendin Uen (Another Land). His name is sometimes transliterated as Kanogpong Songsompuntu. His other major work was Saphan Khard (The Broken Bridge), which was translated into Japanese. Kanokphong completed his primary education.



PHILIPPINE WRITERS



Nick Joaquin
Nicomedes "Onching" M. Joaquin was born on May 4, 1917 in Paco, Manila. His mother was a public school teacher and a colonel father in the Philippine Revolution of 1896.


Nick Joaquin started to write short stories, poems, and essays in 1934. Consider as a brilliant kid, he did not get to finish high school, he discovered that he could study more by reading books on his own, and his father's library had countless of the books he mind to read. He wrote so variedly and so well about so many phase of the Filipino throughout his entire life span.


Gregorio F. Zaide
Legendary historian to Philippine history, Dr. Zaide has made noteworthy contributions. A diligent scholar, he authored 67 books, some were use as textbooks in history for secondary and colleges in the country. He has also written more than 500 articles in history printed in local and foreign journals.



Encarnacion Alzona
Alzona was a reputed historian and guru to a generation of other famous historian's and at the same time as University of the Philippines professor in history. She acknowledged the Lone Prize awarded by the Congress de Hespanitas de Filipinas in 1954 for her El Legado de Espana a Filipina. She is a prolific writer; a number of her historical writing’s have already becomes Classics, mainly her A History of Education in the Philippines.



Teodoro Agoncillo
Agoncillo wrote abundant books and papers about Philippine History. To name a number of his famous works are History of the Filipino People; The Crisis of the Republic; The Revolt of the Masses; The Story of Bonifacio and the Katipunan; Ang Kasaysayan ng Pilipinas; and the Malolos, Philippine History (adopted as official textbook in Philippine History).

JAPANESE WRITERS 

Abe Kobo  (安部公房, March 7, 1924 - January 22, 1993) 
 was a Japanese writer. He was born in Tokyo, grew up in Manchuria and graduated in 1948 with a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University on the condition that he wouldn't practice. He published his first novel in 1948 and worked as an avant-garde novelist and playwright, but it wasn't until he published The Woman in the Dunes in 1960 that he won widespread international acclaim.

In the 1960s, he collaborated with Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara in adapting to film The Pitfall, The Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another and The Ruined Map.

Abe's surreal and often nightmarish explorations of the individual in contemporary society earned him comparisons to Kafka and his influence extended well beyond Japan, particularly with the success of The Woman in the Dunes at the Cannes Film Festival.
Abe is a very famous Japanese novelist and playwright for works and he has been compared to German writer Franz Kafka.

 Osamu Dazai (太宰 治 Dazai Osamu?); (June 19, 1909 – June 13, 1948) was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan. He is noted for his ironic and gloomy wit, his obsession with suicide, and his brilliant fantasy.

Japanese writer. Pseudonym of Tsushima Shuji. Osamu Danzai became "the literary voice of his generation." He's known for works like Shayo (1947, The Setting Sun) and Ningen Shikkaku (1948, No Longer Human).

In what was probably a surprise to all parties concerned, Shūji kept his promise and managed to settle down a bit. He managed to obtain the assistance of established writer Masuji Ibuse, whose connections enabled him to get his works published, and who helped establish his reputation.

The next few years were productive, Shūji wrote at a feverish pace and used the pen name "Osamu Dazai" for the first time in a short story called Ressha (列車 Train 1933): his first experiment with the first-person autobiographical style that later became his trademark. But in 1935, it started to become clear that Dazai could not graduate, and he failed to obtain a job at a Tokyo newspaper as well. He finished The Final Years, intended to be his farewell to the world, and tried to hang himself on 19 March 1935 - failing yet again.

Worse was yet to come, as less than three weeks after his third suicide attempt Dazai developed acute appendicitis and was hospitalized, during which time he become addicted to Pabinal, a morphine-based painkiller. After fighting the addiction for a year, in October 1936 he was taken to a mental institution, locked in a room and forced to quit cold turkey. The "treatment" lasted over a month, during which time Dazai's wife Hatsuyo committed adultery with his best friend Zenshirō Kodate. This eventually came to light and Dazai attempted to commit double suicide with his wife. They both took sleeping pills, but neither one died, so he divorced her. He quickly remarried, this time to a middle school teacher named Michiko Ishihara (石原美知子 Ishihara Michiko). Their first daughter, Sonoko (園子), was born in June 1941.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Dazai wrote a number of subtle novels and short stories that are frequently autobiographical in nature. His first story, Gyofukuki (魚服記 1933), is a grim fantasy involving suicide. Other stories written during this period include Dōke no hana (The Flowers of Buffoonery, 1935), Gyakkō (逆行 Against the Current, 1935), Kyōgen no kami (狂言の神 The God of Farce, 1936), and those published in his 1936 collection Bannen (Declining Years), which describe his sense of personal isolation and his debauchery.

The single most distinguishing feature of Dazai's works is their “first person” viewpoint, a style known in Japanese as "I Novels (私小説 Shishōsetsu?)". All of his stories are autobiographical in some manner. His modes of expression could take the form of a diary, essay, letter, journalistic type reporting, or soliloquy.

Dazai's works are also characterized by a profound pessimism, not surprising from an author who made several unsuccessful suicide attempts before finally succeeding. In his novels the protagonist similarly consider suicide as the only viable alternative to a hellish existence, yet (often) fail to kill themselves due to an equally savage apathy towards their own existence i.e. the question of whether to live or not becomes trivial. In his works, he shifts from pathos to comedy, from melodrama to humor, adjusting his vocabulary accordingly.

His opposition to the prevailing social and literary trends was shared by fellow members of the Buraiha school, including Ango Sakaguchi and Sakunosuke Oda.