2014

 Starry Island
New Writing from Singapore

Series Editor Frank Stewart
Guest Editor Fiona Sze-Lorrain

 Islands of Imagination I
Modern Indonesian Plays

Series Editor Frank Stewart
Guest Editors John H. McGlynn
and Cobina Gillitt

Starry Island: New Writing from Singapore collects the essays, fiction, and poetry of two dozen contemporary writers from Singapore, a nation uniquely multicultural. Their works range in style from meditative essays to lyric poetry to magical realist fiction.

Contributors include Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, Kim Cheng Boey, Shelly Bryant, Grace Chua, Dan Ying, Jeffrey Greene, Philip Jeyaretnam, Amanda Lee Koe, Jee Leong Koh, Desmond Kon, Khoo Seok Wan, Karen Kwek, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Julia C. Lin, Nicholas Liu, Jason Erik Lundberg, Christopher Mooney-Singh, Eleanor Neo, Ng Yi-Sheng, O Thiam Chin, Wena Poon, Alfian Sa’at, Jeremy Tiang, Toh Hsien Min, Wang Xinlei, Cyril Wong, Wong Yoon Wah, and Jerrold Yam. Guest editor Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a poet, editor, and translator in English, French, and Chinese.

Peranakan houses on Everton Road.
Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

The photographs in Starry Island come from various sources and capture Singapore’s ultra-modern architecture as well as traditional Peranakan and Chinese communities.

More information: Singapore blog

Islands of Imagination, Volume One: Modern Indonesian Plays presents seven modern plays by some of Indonesia’s most accomplished dramatists. The works, published between 1939 and 2009, have been shaped by such diverse artistic and political influences as Western and indigenous theater traditions, the need to evade government censorship, and the social issues plaguing Indonesian society.

The playwrights in this volume are Rita Matu Mona, Armijn Pané, N. Riantiarno, Ratna Sarumpaet, Iwan Simatupang, Luna Vidya, and Putu Wijaya.

Included is "Modern Indonesian Plays," an introduction by guest editor Cobina Gillitt, an assistant professor of theater and performance at Purchase College.

Islands of Imagination was published in cooperation with the Lontar Foundation, a Jakarta-based organization whose goal is to publish and celebrate Indonesian literature internationally. Guest editor John McGlynn established the foundation in 1987 and now serves as chairman of its board. He has translated dozens of full-length literary works and, through the foundation, edited and overseen the translation and publication of more than two hundred Indonesian authors.

240 pp., summer 2014 (26:1), $20
ISBN 978-0-8248-4797-5
Project Muse
JSTOR

256 pp., winter 2014 (26:2), $20
ISBN 978-0-8248-5378-5
Project Muse
JSTOR