DARYL QILIN YAM (b. 1991)
is a writer and editor of prose and poetry, born and based in Singapore. His novella Shantih Shantih Shantih (2021), optioned for audiovisual adaptation by Fiction Shore, was shortlisted for the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize (Fiction in English) and subsequently awarded by popular vote the Readers’ Favourite English Book. The manuscript of his second novel Lovelier, Lonelier (2021) received a National Arts Council Creation Grant in 2017 and became a finalist for the 2021 Epigram Books Fiction Prize; the published work was nominated by the National Library Board Singapore for the 2023 International Dublin Literary Award, and had a North American edition released by Gaudy Boy in 2024. Yam’s fourth book, Be Your Own Bae, is forthcoming from Epigram Books in late 2024: a short story collection that brings together a decade’s worth of interlinked short fiction exploring millennial culture, queer kinship and the struggles of artmaking.
Kappa Quartet (2016), his debut novel, was longlisted for the inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize; published by Epigram Books in Singapore and the UK; selected by The Business Times as one of the best novels of 2016; and described by QLRS as “[breaking] new ground in Singaporean writing… a shimmering and poignant novel, an immensely sympathetic and humane exploration of our existential condition.” His writing has since appeared in periodicals and publications such as the Berlin Quarterly, the Mekong Review, the Sewanee Review, The Straits Times, Transnational Literature and The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singapore Short Stories anthology series, alongside literary engagements and residencies across the Asia Pacific region, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Aside from writing, Yam is also an editor and arts organiser. He co-founded the literary charity Sing Lit Station in 2016 and presently serves as its Managing Editor (2023–present), following previous positions as the non-profit’s first Station Control (2016–2019) and the treasurer / Executive Committee member on its Board of Directors (2016–2023). He co-edited the SingPoWriMo anthology series (2015–2017) with poets Jennifer Anne Champion, Joshua Ip, Ruth Tang and Stephanie Dogfoot, and is now the web editor of poetry.sg, prose.sg, the Backlogues podcast and the SingPoWriMo magazine.
Yam holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Warwick. As an undergraduate (2012–2016), he was awarded the Second Year Prize from the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, and spent an intercalated year studying under the AIKOM (Abroad in Komaba) programme (2014–2015) at the University of Tokyo. He also holds an MA in English (Specialisation in Creative Writing) from Nanyang Technological University, where he completed his thesis “Being your own Bae: writing within and against homonationalism in the short story cycle” (2022) under supervision of Boey Kim Cheng. Yam’s thesis comprised a quartet of interlinked stories and a critical exegesis on homonationalism, queer worldbuilding and the contemporary Singapore short story cycle.
