Chew Kok Chang is one of Singapore’s most prolific and well-known Chinese writers and a giant in the Singapore Chinese literary field. Born in 1934 in Guangdong, China, he has published more than 80 works including poetry, novellas, short stories, essays and children’s literature. Also known by various pen names including Zhou Can (周粲), Qiu Ling, Yu Yin, Lin Zhongyue, Zhou Zhixian and Zhou Aijia, he is widely acclaimed regionally and well loved for his ability in being simple yet profound through his spare, elegant writing. He has received several awards including the 1995 Singapore Chinese Literature Award and the 1990 Cultural Medallion.

Chew Kok Chang was born in Guangdong province in China in 1934 and, at the age of four, moved to Singapore with his family in 1938. An avid reader who could not partake in many childhood activities due to poor health, he studied at Chinese language schools Duan Meng Primary School and Chung Cheng Secondary School. In 1953, he published his first collection of poems The Dream of A Child, which was a volume that was well-received by critics and readers and that had him dubbed “a prodigy in the world of poetry”.

Chew continued his studies at Nanyang University’s Faculty of Chinese Language and subsequently at the University of Singapore on a government scholarship. After graduating with first class honours and then a Masters of Arts in Literature in 1969, he became a teacher at various Singapore schools and at the National Institute of Education. He then joined Curriculum Planning Division in the Ministry of Education and wrote educational supplementary materials.

At the same time, he continued writing. With six publications to his name by the time he had graduated from university, Chew remained passionately committed to writing even as he worked in the educational industry. Over the decades, he has proven to be a versatile writer, wearing the multiple hats of poet, academician and literary critic, short story writer, novelist, editor and children’s writer with equal aplomb.

As a poet, he has published 10 volumes of poetry over the years. These have contained astute observations of and reflections on life as well as private expressions of deep emotion all written
in the modern, vernacular style with spare, lyrical language. As an academician, particularly in the earlier years of his literary career, Chew has written several noteworthy essays of literary criticism, analysing works of modern poetry and classical literature including an appreciation of Song Dynasty lyrics, as well as essays on the teaching of the Chinese language and literature in Singapore.

As a travel writer, he has published four travelogues. As a writer of prose and short stories, he has written beautifully engaging tales, many of them little vignettes of everyday life in Singapore, and others being reflections on issues or encounters, expressing profound thoughts in simple, quiet prose. He also expanded his short story format early on and branched into writing novellas, becoming, in 1988, the first Singapore writer to publish a compilation of novellas with The Devil’s Night: A Collection of Mini-Novels, following that debut with four more. He also became the editor of the mini-novel compilation A Kaleidoscope of Mini-Novels (1994) and the Mini-Novel Quarterly Periodical published by the Singapore Association of Writers. Today, he is widely regarded as a pioneer of the Singapore Chinese novella.

As a children’s writer, particularly in the latter part of his literary career, Chew has contributed enormously to the world of children’s Chinese literature, writing volumes of poetry for children,
as well as writing and translating children’s fairytales, folktales, nursery rhymes and poems. His poetry collection for children, Our Country (1976), was awarded the National Book Development Council of Singapore Book Prize (Children’s and Youth Literature) in 1976. His Chinese adaptation of folktales from the Philippines, The Crow and the Coleto: Folktales from the Philippines (1980), has been translated into English and Malay, as have his poems.

So far, in a literary career that has spanned almost 60 years, Kok Chang has published over 80 literary works. For his literary achievements, he has also received the 1980 National Book Development Council of Singapore Book Prize (Poetry) for Firefly Catcher, the 1990 Cultural Medallion (Literature) from the National Arts Council, and the 1995 Singapore Chinese Literature Award.

Currently, Chew is retired from teaching but remains in touch with the literary scene as a member of the Singapore Association of Writers and an honorary executive committee member of the Singapore Literature Society.

More importantly, he continues to write. He presented his latest publication to his readers in
January 2012 at a sharing and book-signing session at the National Library, and remains very active on his Chinese-language website Zhou Can’s Writing Desk, posting his latest poems, essays, short stories and other works online for all to share.