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| Bernice Chauly |
Bernice Chauly is a Malaysian novelist, poet and educator. Born in George Town, Penang, to Chinese-Punjabi teachers, she read Education and English Literature in Canada as a government scholar. For over 20 years, she worked as a multi-disciplinary artist and is recognized as one of the most significant voices of her generation. She is also the former Festival Director of the George Town Literary Festival (2011-2018), which won the Literary Festival Award at the 2018 London Book Fair’s International Excellence Awards.
She is the author of six books, which include poetry and prose; going there and coming back(1997), The Book of Sins(2008), Lost in KL(2008), the acclaimed memoir Growing Up With Ghosts (2011) which won the Readers’ Choice Awards 2012 in the Non-Fiction Category and Onkalo(2013, “Direct, honest and powerful”–JM Coetzee). Her debut novel Once We Were There (2017), set against the Malaysian Reformasi of 1998 has been hailed as a “groundbreaking page-turner on the taboos of race, religion, sex, drugs, and Malaysian politics” – South China Morning Post, and “a stirring, necessary read.” –The Star, Malaysia. Once We Were Therewon the inaugural Penang Monthly Book Prize 2017, the 2ndPrize in Fiction of the Star-Popular Readers’ Choice Awards 2018, and is published by Epigram Books Singapore-London.
- In 1998, she began organizing literary events, and in 2005, founded Readings, the longest-running live literary platform in Kuala Lumpur. In 2011, she was Festival Director for the Writers Unlimited Tour Kuala Lumpur/Makassar and is the Festival Director of the George Town Literary Festival in Penang, the only state-funded literary festival in Malaysia.
- She is the author of five books, which include poetry and prose: going there and coming back (1997), The Book of Sins (2008), Lost in KL (2008), Growing Up With Ghosts (2011) which won in the Readers’ Choice Awards 2012 and Onkalo (2013).
