short fiction
Stories I feel are most encapsulating of me as a writer are “Icariana” (tender apocalypse flash fiction), “Laura Lau Will Drain You Dry” (campy feminine horror), “What Becomes of Curious Minds” (diaspora Wonderland), “Red, Scuttle When The Ships Come Down” (magical realism inspired by migrant labour/prison history), and “The Name Ziya” (fantasy dark academia). But you can find all the short fiction I’ve published since 2022 (with a more curated selection from 2021 and earlier) below.
You can also listen to some audio versions on Spotify here.
2026
Your Inventory is Filling Up Again, Free To Play: A Video Games Anthology (Difference Engine)
“You kept messing up the final part. You had to keep starting over, and your girlfriend was getting angrier and angrier at you, and you kept getting devoured over and over again.“
2025
Red, Scuttle When the Ships Come Down, Uncanny Magazine
“The British plucked us from our prisons and sailed us here, this jungle island in the Nanyang with their treasure striated into the bedrock. More precious than gold, they told us on the ship, as though we had a choice to leave if we disagreed.”
> Author interview
The Name Ziya, Reactor
“I once had a name of five segments. But henceforth, and onward to Ustonel, I would simply be Ziya.“
> Recommended in Locus
> Reviewed by Tar Vol On
> Highlighted by Book Riot
They Will Give Us a Home: Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity (Erewhon Books, 2025)
> Reviewed in Lightspeed
2024
What Becomes of Curious Minds, Lightspeed
“On the third evening of every week, dozens come to Stalactite Keep to hear the storyteller teach about the place beyond Wonderland.“
> Author interview
The Last Singapore Girls: To Root Somewhere Beautiful (Outland Entertainment, 2024)
> Reprinted in Best New Singaporean Short Stories, Vol 7 (Epigram Books)
An Eye for an Eye, NO FLASH/Third Eye (National Gallery Singapore audio fiction)
Single Use, The Cool Girls Have the Eyes & Resistant to Death, Ctrl Alt Future (NTU School of Humanities x Smart Nation Office)
When You Think About Me, The Straits Times
2023
Laura Lau Will Drain You Dry, Nightmare Magazine
“The day after the picture of your boobs gets sent around the school, a mosquito lands on your tongue and bursts like a ripe cherry.”
> Author interview
Concerning the Fantastic Native Flora of the Indo-Chinese Padma Valley, Pseudopod
“We set out on the morning of the eighteenth of May. It was predictably humid, the jungle of the wild sort that would swallow one whole.“
2022
Icariana, Baffling Magazine
“I find her by the riverbed after the end of the world, wings tucked under her grubby ribs.“
> Recommended in Tor’s must-read short speculative fiction for January 2023
> Recommended in Locus Magazine
> Reprinted in We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2022 (Neon Hemlock) and 2022 Best of Utopian Speculative Fiction Anthology (Android Press)
Love Heart Soup, Augur Magazine
“It starts like any other soup: garlic, onion, bones, ginger, scallions, salt. On top of that, though, and depending on the day, Sama layers notes of love.“
> Recommended in Locus Magazine
> Reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy, Vol 2
Hundred-Handed One, Uncanny Magazine
“When the doctors tugged me from Ma I gripped on so tight with all my hundred hands that I left little handprints all over the umbilical cord.”
> Tor Nightfire’s Best Horror Short Fiction Feb 2022
The Lighthouse Keeper’s Guide to Pulau Belakang Mati, Flash Fiction Online
“Your first day; your first tilting steps off the crooked jetty. It was nearly trampled by the Dawn, but like the island, it still stands.“
Lay My Stomach On Your Scales, Strange Horizons
“I become forty eight kilograms lighter when I detach my head from my body.”
Wife, Skin, Keeper, Slick: Fish Eats Lion Redux (Epigram Books, 2022)
> Reviewed in The Straits Times
First Strikes the Lightning, Anathema Magazine
“In the next life, she thought, and kept on dancing.“
That Is Their Tragedy: Fright: Winners of the Storytel Epigram Horror Prize (Epigram Books, 2022)
Rooted, Reckoning
“Not many choose to come here any longer. What will happen when they are outgrown?“
Wok Lung Hei, Tree & Stone
selected from 2021 & earlier
Wildlife Encounter, Strange Horizons (poetry)
The 74th District, Speculative City
“But now here she was, the first councilor of Raspa’s new 74th District, living population: one.“
> Recommended in Tor’s must-read short speculative fiction for April 2021
> Recommended in Locus Magazine
Facechanger, perhappened
> Nominated for Best Small Fictions
Tales from the Spirit South, Sword & Kettle Press
