The Asian Bookshelf talks to Dr Rosslyn Prosser and Dr Mandakini Arora on teaching Creative Writing in Singapore

Writer, Jon Gresham, talks to Dr Rosslyn Prosser and Dr Mandakini Arora about teaching and studying creative writing at LaSalle College of Arts, the differences between teaching CW in Singapore and Australia, successful international South East Asian writers, submitting overseas, the process of decolonizing the anglo-centricity and colonial overhang of creative writing education, and the challenge of finding and exploring creativity.

Dr Rosslyn Prosser is the Programme Leader of La Salle’s MA in Creative Writing, Dr Prosser is an academic & writer who has published a range of forms and genres from academic publication to life-writing, prose and creative non-fiction. She has taught creative writing, literary studies, media and communications and gender studies in Australian universities for over 20 years and at LaSalle for the last 2 years.

Dr Mandakini Arora is a writer and has edited Small Steps, Giant Leaps: A History of AWARE and the Women’s Movement in Singapore (AWARE, 2007) & Jean Marshall’s Pahang Letters, 1953–54: Sidelights on Malaya During the Emergency (Ethos, 2017). She holds a PhD in history from Duke University & graduated from La Salle with an MA in Creative writing this year

Books mentioned

Mathew Salesses, Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing & Workshopping (Catapult, 2021)

Felicia Rose Chavez, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom(Haymarket Books, 2021)

Barbara W Tuchman, The Guns of August (Penguin Random House, 1994, originally published in 1962)

Olga Tokarczuk, Flights (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017)

Benjamin Labatut, The Maniac (Pushkin Press, 2023)

Akhil Sharma, Teaching Creative Writing in Singapore (Akhil Sharma, 2023)

Kamau Brathwaite, Calypso

Joshua Ip, Sonnets from the Singlish (Math Paper Press, 2012)

Other Links

LaSalle College of Arts, Master of Arts in Creative Writing

American Women’s Association Writing Group

Darryl Whetter