Ricardo de Ungria (The Philippines)

PoetRicardo M. de Ungria has published eight books of poetry and edited a number of anthologies, for which he has won seven National Book Awards. Through a Fulbright Grant, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis in 1989. He has received writing grants from the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers and Bellagio Study and Conference Center. He is a founding member of the Philippine Literary Arts Council, which published Caracoa, the first and only poetry journal in the Philippines in the eighties, and initiated a series of poetry readings that stirred interest in the performative aspect of the literary arts. In 1999 when he moved to Davao, he founded the Davao Writers Guild that, since then, has held annual readings in the schools and malls in the city and published books by its members and a literary journal called Dagmay that features literary works in various languages by mostly young writers in the Davao region. He has served as Chancellor of the University of the Philippines in Mindanao (2001-2007) where he now teaches creative writing to undergraduates and as Commissioner for the Arts at the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (2007-2010) where he was also festival director of the Philippine International Arts Festival for three years. His poetry takes on the various guises of the lyrical, the erotic, the political, and the experimental.

Khet Mar (Myanmar)

Essayist, Short story writer, Journalist

Khet Mar is a Burmese journalist, novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist who has actively written about the true lives of ordinary people and the current situation in Burma. Trained as a chemist, Khet Mar embarked on a writing career and published the novel [Wild Snowy Night], three collections of short stories and a volume of essays. Her works have translated into Japanese, Spanish and English, broadcast and made into a short film in Japan. In 2007 she participated in the prestigious International Writing Program at The University of Iowa. In addition to her writing, Khet Mar is a community developer and environmental activist. She is one of the founders of the Zagawa Environment Network, which brings together writers and journalists focusing on environmental issues in the region. She was also a volunteer teacher for a school aimed to help young children living with HIV/AIDS and worked as an organizer for other Monastic Orphanage Education Schools in Rangoon, Burma. In 2009 she was a featured writer at the PEN Word Voices Festival, and was a writer-in-residence at City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, which provides sanctuary to writers exiled under threat of severe persecution in their native countries. In April 2011, Khet Mar participated in Writers in Motion, which is sponsored through grant funds provided by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State.

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (Ireland)

Short story writer, Journalist

Philip Ó Ceallaigh is the author of almost forty published stories, many of which are collected in Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse and The Pleasant Light of Day, published by Penguin. Both collections were shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Prize.
His fiction has been translated into ten languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Japanese. His work has adapted into film, most recently in the Romanian feature film A Very Unsettled Summer /O vara foarte instabila (2013). His works have appeared in anthologies internationally, including in The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story. He has won a number of honours, including two Hennessy Awards and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. He is also an essayist, critic, journalist, translator and editor.
Originally from Ireland, he has travelled widely and lived in many countries, including Spain, Russia, the US, Egypt and India. He now lives in Bucharest, Romania.
His essays on the Holocaust and literature in Eastern Europe under totalitarianism, which are all parts of a forthcoming non-fiction book,have attracted increasing international attention. Two of these essays are published in the Beijing-based Oriental History Review.

Chung Wen-yin (Taiwan)

Fiction Writer, Prose Writer, Photographer

Chung Wenyin is a Taiwanese fiction and essay writer. She worked as a newspaper reporter, still photographer and film and art critic. Chung’s literary works include collections of short stories, such as [Two People in One Day] (《一天兩個人》) and [The Past] (《過去》). Her novels include [Woman Islands] (《女島紀行》), [Over the Left Bank of River] (《在河左岸》), [Departing Love] (《愛別離》) and [Merciful Lover] (《慈悲情人》). She has been awarded more than ten literary prizes, including the 2003 Yunlin County Cultural Award and the Wu San-Lien Literature Prize in 2005, which is considered the most important literary prize in Taiwan. In 2011, her acclaimed Island Trilogy Decayed Lust (《豔歌行》), Decayed Land (《短歌行》) and Decayed Life (《傷歌行》)were published. The trilogy has now been published in simplified Chinese, Japanese and English. Decayed Lust was shortlisted for the 2011 Taiwan Literature Award.

JING Ge (Mainland China)

Fiction Writer, Chinese Calligrapher

Jing Ge is a Suzhou based writer and calligrapher. Upon his graduation with a major in Chinese from Suzhou Normal School, Jing taught in several high schools and received a diploma from the Suzhou College of Education. He was assigned to Wu Jiang Cultural Centre in 1988. Since 2002, Jing has been a professional writer in the Writers’ Association of Jiangsu Province. His writing career started in the nineties and his works include novels such as [Shot to Death] (《槍斃》) and [Rat Poison] (《鼠藥》). He also writes short stories and is an accomplished Chinese calligrapher. His works have been thrice awarded the highest literary honor in Jiangsu Province—the “Mount Zijin Prize in Literature” (「紫金山文學獎」). Among Jiang’s works, there are more than twenty pieces which have been included in the “National Annual Collection of Outstanding Chinese Writings”. One of his novels was adapted into the film [March] (《三月花》), which became one of the selected screenings in Sydney Film Festival 2006. His novel [The Painted Skin] (《畫皮》) also received a film adaption, entitled as [The Back] (《背面》), which was screened at the Berlin Film Festival. Jing Ge has also exhibited his paintings and calligraphies around China, in cities such as Suzhou and Hangzhou.