Archives: Authors

Charlotte Bronte was a British novelist and poet. Bronte was born in a small town in Yorkshire, England, and was the third of six children. Her mother died of cancer when she was only five years old. Despite their loss, the children were encouraged to pursue their education and were taught by their father. In 1846, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte published a collection of their poems under the pseudonyms— Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The following year, Charlotte published Jane Eyre which was an immediate success and brought her literary fame.

Veronica Llorca-Smith is a public speaker and author. After two decades in senior leadership positions leading large teams in Asia Pacific for world brands such as Apple and Estée Lauder, she founded her own business. Originally from Spain, Veronica has lived in nine countries across Europe, South America, Asia, and the Pacific and speaks six languages fluently, including Chinese. She’s also an amateur triathlete and has completed over 100 races, including the World Championships of Half Ironman in Vegas and an Ironman in Western Australia.

Veronica uses her professional experience leading and motivating multicultural teams, as well as her passion for cultures, traveling, and sports, to empower others to unlock their potential in life. Her writing and public speaking gravitate around a growth mindset, self-improvement, and personal development, and her positivity shines through all her work. She’s a strong diversity and inclusion advocate and leverages her social media channels to raise awareness and inspire inclusion in organizations and society. In 2023, she was a finalist for the Diversity Lead of The Year Award by Women in IT Asia. She also spoke in the 12th Asian Women in Leadership Summit in Singapore in 2023.

She previously published The Lemon Tree Mindset, Conquering Your Burnout and The Flight Home, winner of the Literary Titan award. Veronica is a mom of two daughters and lives with her family in Hong Kong.

Edmund Terence Gomez is former Professor of Political Economy at the Faculty of Economics & Administration, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. He specialises in state-market relations and the linkages between politics, policies, and business development. He has also held appointments at the University of Leeds (England) and Murdoch University (Australia) and served as Visiting Professor at Kobe University (Japan) and at the Universities of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and California (San Diego) (United States). Between 2005 and 2008, he served as Research Coordinator at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), in Geneva, Switzerland. Other academic appointments include Visiting Fellowships at the Australian National University, Canberra and at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Denmark.

His publications include Malaysia’s Political Economy: Politics, Patronage and Profits (Cambridge University Press, 1997), Chinese Business in Malaysia: Accumulation, Ascendance, Accommodation (University of Hawaii Press, 1999), Political Business in East Asia (Routledge, 2002), The State of Malaysia: Ethnicity, Equity and Reform (Routledge, 2004), The State, Development and Identity in Multi-ethnic Countries: Ethnicity, Equity and the Nation (Routledge, 2008), The Politics of Resource Extraction: Indigenous Peoples, Multinational Corporations and the State (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012), Affirmative Action, Ethnicity and Conflict (Routledge, 2013), Government-Linked Companies and Sustainable, Equitable Development (Routledge, 2014), Minister of Finance Incorporated: Ownership and Control of Corporate Malaysia (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017), Malaysia’s 14th General Election and UMNO’s Fall: Intra-Elite Feuding and the Pursuit of Power (Routledge, 2019) and China in Malaysia: State-Business Relations and the New Order of Investment Flows

Ahmad Rizaq lives in the skyscraper-fenced compact community of Jakarta. His wordsmith journey started as a digital storyteller with a focus on crafting marketing pitches, and he has bent all multimedia elements, from blogging and social media to e-commerce and visual copywriting. His childhood dream was to become a fiction writer, and on one reflective night, he rediscovered that dream. He is now making his debut with “Little Lovely Lily.”
Connect with him on Instagram: @ahmadwrizaq

American Suzanne Kamata has lived in Japan for over thirty years. Her writing has appeared in The Best Asian Short Stories in 2017, 2022 and 2023 and The Best Asian Travel Writing 2020, The APWT Drunken Boat Anthology of New Writing, Telltale Food: Writings from the Fay Khoo Award 2017-2019 and numerous other anthologies. She is the author of a previous short story collection, The Beautiful One Has Come (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2011) which won a Nautilus Silver Award, and a Next Generation Indie Best award; the young adult novels Gadget Girl: The Art of Being Invisible (GemmaMedia, 2013), named an Honor Book by the Asian American Pacific Librarians Association, and Indigo Girl (GemmaMedia, 2019) a Freeman Honor Book. Her most recent novel is The Baseball Widow (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2021). She is an associate professor at Naruto University of Education.

Larry Nyanti hails from Borneo, grew up in Baton Rouge, and briefly studied creative writing in Dublin. He lives in sunny Kota Kinabalu, where he practices and teaches medicine. A Rei of Sunshine is his debut novel.

Suzanne Scott Tomita was born in Tunisia and raised in Venezuela, Germany, Indonesia, Canada, and Australia. Her writing includes personal essays on the topic of motherhood, mid-life, and marriage published in Canada’s national newspaper The Globe and Mail. She has published on the topic of home and belonging in Expat Living Singapore.

Suzanne has a PhD in Education from The University of British Columbia. In 2014, Suzanne completed The Writer’s Studio (TWS) Creative Writing Certificate at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada where she studied with writers Kevin Chong and Wayde Compton. At TWS she wrote the beginnings of her debut novel, a selected chapter of which is published in Emerge, SFU Publications.

Set during the racial tensions of post-colonial Singapore, and contemporary London, Until Even the Angels, is the story of an unlikely friendship between Mei Mei Goh, the domestic servant girl to the wealthy Hamilton family, and young Honour Hamilton. This literary crime novel questions the meaning of motherhood, childhood, belonging, and memory.

Suzanne completed an advanced fiction course with author Claire Keegan in 2023 at the Asia Creative Writing Programme, a collaboration between the National Arts Council of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University. When she’s not reading or writing, Suzanne walks Singapore’s nature parks and visits museums imagining characters for her next novel. She lives in Singapore with her family.

Leslie Lopez, a Malaysian citizen, has reported extensively on political and economic affairs in the region since the mid-1980s.
After brief stints with two local newspapers in Malaysia, Mr Lopez, 60, served as the Reuters correspondent covering Malaysia and Brunei before moving to Jakarta as the Indonesian bureau chief for the Business Times of Singapore. He returned to Malaysia to head The Asian Wall Street Journal news bureau in Kuala Lumpur in 1996. During his 10 years with this publication, Mr Lopez won awards for his reporting on the 1997 Asian economic crisis and the aftermath of Asia’s deadly financial tsunami. He also led the paper’s regional coverage on the growing threat from Islamic terrorists, breaking dozens of exclusive pieces that have helped bring greater understanding of the problems posed by religious militancy.
Mr Lopez joined The Straits Times of Singapore as the paper’s Senior Regional Correspondent in early 2007. His coverage of regional political and economic issues won him the award for Best Story for three years running. In 2009, Singapore Press Holdings, the island state’s largest news organisation, named him Journalist of the Year.
In 2012, Mr Lopez joined The Edge media group to push the organisation’s regional presence through The Edge Review, a weekly all-digital political and business publication specialising in key news developments in Southeast Asia. The Edge Review quickly stamped its mark as a premier publication, wining top awards for its business and political reporting on the region from the prestigious Society of Publishers Asia (Sopa).
Mr Lopez, who lives in Kuala Lumpur and travels regularly on reporting assignments, is currently writing for Singapore’s CNA Digital.

Friska Wirya is the powerhouse behind Fresh by Friska, a sought-after change management and transformation advisor partnering with leaders of global organisations to safeguard and accelerate their transformations.
A multi-hyphenate, Friska is a multiple award-winning Top 50 Global Change Management Thought Leader, Top 50 Asia Pacific Business Influencer, TEDx speaker and in-demand leadership facilitator who has spoken for the likes of Salesforce, Culture Amp, F5, Worley, UN Women and Microsoft. The first edition of her book, The Future Fit Organisation, achieved 3 best seller categories in 3 days, reaching #1 in Business Organisational Change and is stocked in bookstores across Australia, Indonesia and Singapore.

Puty Puar is a mother currently living in Bekasi, Indonesia. She works freelance as an illustrator, content creator, and book author. She integrates her blog and social media to deliver heartwarming and relatable visual content that aligns with her purpose, empowering women from within and her belief in the collective power of women to create massive and long-lasting impacts. She also shares her experiences through sharing sessions, talk shows, and workshops.
She is the founder and executive director of Buibu Baca Buku, a community that aims to empower women, especially mothers, through literacy and reading habits.
In 2018, Puty won The JCS International Young Creative Award, a part of The International Emmy Award 2018. In 2023, she received The Good Chat, a fellowship for Southeast Asia community leaders and influencers to mainstream climate conversation to support their countries’ climate goals. She’s currently pursuing a Master of Science degree in Sustainable Development.