Toji Cultural Centre Guesthouse, photo courtesy of Toji facebook
For his work on minority speculative fiction from Singapore, Dr Nazry Bahrawi has been conferred the Toji Cultural Residency award jointly offered by the National Arts Council of Singapore and the Toji Cultural Foundation in South Korea.
Dr Nazry will be taking up residency between April and May 2019 at the Toji Cultural Centre, a literary guesthouse in the city of Wonju, Gangwon province, a two-hour drive from Seoul.
While there, Dr Nazry will be translating selected short stories from Bahasa to English for a literary anthology that he is editing titled Singa Pura Pura: An Anthology of Malay Speculative Fiction from Singapore. He will also be preparing an essay for that anthology as well as an article on artificial intelligence (AI) narratives from Singapore for submission to a peer-reviewed academic journal.
The Program for Supporting Creative Works and Cultural Exchanges by Foreign Writers is administered by the Toji Cultural Foundation to provide residential facilities and a quiet environment for writers to work in and focus on their craft. The residency provides the opportunity for writers to dedicate their time entirely to writing new literary works. Each year, 10 to 14 international and Korean writers and artists will take up residency at the Centre.