Bernice Chauly (born 1968,

Georgetown, Penang George Town is the capital of the Malaysian state of Penang. It is the core city of the George Town Conurbation, Malaysia's second largest metropolitan area with a population of 2.84 million and the second largest metropolitan economy in t ...

) is a

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

n writer, poet, educator, festival director, actor, photographer and filmmaker.

Biography

Born to a

Chindian Chindian (; zh, c=中印人, p=Zhōngyìnrén, cy=Jūngyanyàn; ; ); is an informal term used to refer to a person of mixed Chinese and Indian ancestry; i.e. from any of the host of ethnic groups native to modern China and modern India. There ...

teacher couple, she read Education and English Literature at the

University of Winnipeg The University of Winnipeg (UWinnipeg, UW, or U of W) is a public research university in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It offers undergraduate programs in art, business, economics, education, science and applied health as well as graduate progra ...

, Canada as a government scholar. She is the author of seven books, which include poetry and prose; going there and coming back (1997), The Book of Sins (2008), Lost in KL (2008), the acclaimed

memoir A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autob ...

Growing Up With Ghosts (2011) which won in the Popular Readers’ Choice Awards 2012 in the Non-Fiction Category, Onkalo (2013), her third collection of poems which Nobel laureate J.M Coetzee has said is "direct, honest and powerful", Once We Were There (2017) published by

Epigram Books Epigram Books is an independent publishing company in Singapore. It publishes works of Singapore-based writers, poets and playwrights. History Epigram was founded in 1991 by Edmund Wee as a design agency. Epigram began the publishing and d ...

, Incantations/Incarcerations (2019) published by Gerakbudaya. In 1998, she began organising literary events in Kuala Lumpur and in 2005, founded Readings, the longest-running live literary platform in

Kuala Lumpur Kuala Lumpur (KL), officially the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, is the capital city and a Federal Territories of Malaysia, federal territory of Malaysia. It is the largest city in the country, covering an area of with a census population ...

. In 2011, she was Festival Director for the Writers Unlimited Tour Kuala Lumpur/Makassar and is the Festival Director of the George Town Literary Festival in Penang (2011 – 2018), the only international literature festival in Malaysia. The festival was awarded The Literary Festival Award at the London Book Fair (2019). The award judges stated that "the GTLF stands outs a vibrant, diverse and brave festival that engages with a wide community of voices, speaking to the world from a complex region." She was also the co-curator of at Read My World International Literature Festival Amsterdam (2015). In 2018, Chauly formed PEN Malaysia and was nominated as Director in 2019. PEN Malaysia aims to uphold freedoms of speech and expression in Malaysia and to conduct key events to foster literacy and the love of literature amongst its multicultural society. She was a resident at the University of Iowa's

International Writing Program The International Writing Program (IWP) is a writing residency for international artists in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Since 2014, the program offers online courses to many writers and poets around the world. Since its inception in 1967, the I ...

in 2014 and is the Founder and Director of the KL Writers Workshop. She currently teaches creative writing at the

University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus The University of Nottingham Malaysia is a private university branch campus of the University of Nottingham. The university is situated in Semenyih, Selangor, Malaysia. The university is rated ‘Competitive’ in the SETARA 2025 rating system ...

. For over 20 years, she worked extensively in the creative industries and won multiple awards for her work and her contribution to the arts in Malaysia.

Bibliography

* (2019) * (2017) * (2013) * (2011) * (2008) * (2008) * (1997)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chauly, Bernice 1968 births Living people Academics of the University of Nottingham People from George Town, Penang Malaysian people of Indian descent Malaysian poets Malaysian people of Punjabi descent Malaysian people of Chinese descent Malaysian women poets