“One of Singapore’s most inventive literary voices” (Female Magazine), Wen-yi Lee is the author of The Dark We Know (Gillian Flynn Books, 2024), a YA horror inspired by Spring Awakening, and When They Burned the Butterfly (Tor, 2025), an adult historical fantasy set in postcolonial Singapore. A Clarion West Workshop alum, her short fiction and essays have appeared in Lightspeed, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Nightmare, and Reactor, among others, as well as best-of collections and anthologies including Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity, Best New Singapore Short Stories, and Singaporean speculative collection Fish Eats Lion Redux. She has written for National Gallery Singapore and The Straits Times, among others, and has mentored for programmes like Author Mentor Match and Write Team Mentors. Her work usually revolves around problem girls, haunted bodies, fixations, and history.
Her work has been supported by the Carl Brandon Society’s Octavia E Butler Memorial Scholarship, the UK National Centre for Writing, and the National Arts Council of Singapore. She is a graduate of University College London and is currently based at home in Singapore. Outside of writing, she has also worked in the publishing scene in various capacities, helped organise literary festivals, and is the current managing editor of prose.sg, the literary archive run by Sing Lit Station.
(Photo: Gianna Chun)
Short bio: Wen-yi Lee is the Singaporean author of When They Burned the Butterfly and The Dark We Know. Her work, which speculates on troubling women, troubled history, and ghosts, has also appeared in venues like Lightspeed, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Reactor, and various anthologies. She has been supported by the Clarion West Octavia E Butler Scholarship, the National Arts Council of Singapore, and the National Centre for Writing in the UK. Find her on socials @wenyilee_ or at wenyileewrites.com.
High resolution headshots and book covers, as well as author bios of different lengths, can be found here.