Current residents
Pingyu Sun (July 2026)
Pingyu Sun (July 2026)Pingyu is a corporate worker by day, a writer-translator by night, and a guzheng musician on the weekends. As a freelance translator (Chinese/English) with a focus in the arts and literature, Pingyu has provided translation services to various arts organizations for a range texts, including concert programme notes, documentary subtitles, biographies, websites, advertisements, and academic essays. Her works have been published in PRISM: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, A Topsy-Turvy World – Short Plays and Fates from the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and YUAN Magazine.
Pingyu graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Chinese Studies and a minor in Translation. Her discipline in Chinese literature and music shapes her interest in exploring local Singaporean voices through sounds and words. Her experience in the corporate world makes her a highly adaptable collaborator that always submits in her deliverables on time. Pingyu is currently translating a book-length poetry collection by a Singaporean poet. Her translation and writing pursuits can be found on her blog www.afloatingeyot.wordpress.com. This residency is funded by National Arts Council Singapore.
Adelle Wee (July 2026)
Adelle Wee is an award-winning Korean-to-English translator from Singapore. She holds an MA in Korean-English translation from Ewha Womans University and a BA in English from the National University of Singapore, and is a current fellow at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. A two-time winner of the LTI Korea Translation Award for Aspiring Translators in the Literature and Film Categories and the recipient of the Fiction Commendation Award in the 56th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards, she has translated short stories, essays, and films. Her debut novel translation A Spider Is Saturday Dawn by Jeong Duk-si is forthcoming.
Jonathan Chan (June-Dec 2026)
Jonathan Chan is a writer and editor of poems and essays. Over the course of the National Centre for Writing – Singapore Residency Programme 2026 (Virtual), he will be working on a sequence of poems tentatively titled thread of joy. He is the author of the poetry collections going home (Landmark, 2022), bright sorrow (Landmark, 2025), and the forthcoming azalea dialogues, recipient of the 2025 Gasher Two Languages Prize. He serves as the Managing Editor of poetry.sg. He lives and works in Singapore. More of his writing can be found at jonbcy.wordpress.com. This residency is funded by National Arts Council Singapore.
Sher Ting (June-Dec 2026)
Sher Ting (June-Dec 2026)Sher Ting is a Singaporean-Chinese writer. She is a Bread Loaf Conference, Kenyon Review Winter Workshop and Tin House Winter Workshop alumni. She has work published/forthcoming in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, Gulf Coast, AGNI, Colorado Review and elsewhere. Her full-length poetry collection, Burn After Dawn, is published with Landmark Books. She has two poetry chapbooks, Bodies of Separation and The Long-Lasting Grief of Foxes, published with Cathexis Northwest Press and Mouthfeel Press respectively. She tweets at @sherttt and writes at sherting.com. Sher’s virtual residency will run from June-December 2026. This residency is funded by National Arts Council Singapore.
Chrystal Ho (June-Dec 2026)
Chrystal Ho (she/they) is the author of Elsewhere, the Cosmos Cracks (AFTERIMAGE Press), a 2024 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize finalist. Her poetry and nonfiction have been published in Portside Review, PR&TA, and Sine Theta Mag, among others. She lives and writes in Singapore. Chrystal’s virtual residency will run from June-December 2026. This residency is funded by National Arts Council Singapore.
Future residents
Laura Vroomen (August 2026)
Laura Vroomen has been a Dutch-to-English translator for over twenty years, translating both fiction and non-fiction. Titles include The Housemates by Teun Toebes, Back to the Coast by Saskia Noort, The Ice-Cream Makers by Ernest van der Kwast and Sitting Still Like a Frog by Eline Snel. She currently lives in Glasgow, in a neighbourhood that is home to 88 different languages. This residency is funded by the Dutch Foundation of Literature.
Anke Kranendonk (August 2026)
Anke Kranendonk has been a writer for 35 years. She writes for all ages, from picture books and stories (including read aloud stories) to YA fiction and adult fiction. She has written more than 150 books. Anke is also a teacher in Creative Writing at the Writers Academy of the Netherlands.
Before she started writing, she was an actress and performed in theatres at schools and for television.
For more on Anke’s work, visit https://ankekranendonk.nl/
This residency is funded by the Dutch Foundation of Literature.
Carol-Ann Belzil-Normand (September-October 2026)
Carol-Ann Belzil-Normand lives and works in Quebec. She is currently studying PhD in littérature et arts de la scène et de l’écran at Université Laval. In her research, she is interested in the concept of frivolity as a sensitive and humorous methodological approach through animated cinema. Belzil-Normand has completed creative residencies and participated in collective exhibitions in several artist-run centers in Quebec. Her work has been honored in solo exhibitions at Arprim, Atelier Presse-Papier, La Bande Vidéo, Caravansérail, Galerie R3 and l’Oeil de Poisson. She has screened her animated films at many local and international festivals. After Sanités (Moult Éditions, 2020), Pussy Ghost (Écrits des Forges, 2021), and Vamp (Éditions du passage, 2024), feu flou bouche (Lézard amoureux, 2026) is her fourth poetry collection.
She will stay at Dragon Hall from 1 September–2 October 2026 as part of the UNESCO Circular residency.
Image © Justine Latour
Maya Horton (September-October 2026)
Maya Horton is a multidisciplinary writer working across speculative fiction, poetry, and memoir. Their work examines identity, memory, and place through the lens of a third culture adulthood. They are also a visual artist and a software engineer, and live in a Cambridgeshire village on the edge of the fens. Maya has been selected for a writing residency in Jakarta UNESCO City of Literature as part of a circular residency project with Norwich. The residency will run from 14 September–10 October 2026.
Erni Salleh (October 2026)
Erni Salleh (October 2026)Erni Salleh is a Singaporean author, former librarian and museum educator based in Dorset, UK. She holds an MA in Southeast Asian Studies which she uses to interrogate histories, cultures and family identities as part of her writing. Her previous work includes a standalone adult novel, The Java Enigma, shortlisted for the Epigram Book Fiction Prize in 2020. She currently writes The Travelling Library Chronicles of Maizey Lee, a middle-grade adventure series that blends travel, family, friendship, and STEM discovery. The first book in the series, The Road to Bangkok won Best Young People’s Fiction at the Singapore Book Awards 2025. She also founded Museum Scribblers, a writing group for adults who write for children and young people, and regularly mentors early-career writers through object-based and place-inspired prompts. This residency is funded by National Arts Council Singapore.
Photo credit – Rob Coombe.
Felicia Low-Jimenez (October 2026)
Felicia Low-Jimenez (October 2026)Born and raised in Singapore, Felicia has an MA in Literary Theory and Asian Studies with a focus on anime and manga. She co-writes the bestselling middle-grade mystery series Sherlock Sam and is the writer of Tiger Girls, a young adult fantasy graphic novel selected for the White Ravens 2025 list. She was a bookseller and now works in comics publishing. This residency is funded by National Arts Council Singapore.
Dong I-Hyang (November 2026)
Dong I-Hyang is a Seoul-based playwright who also works as a director and film director. Her plays include Liver and River (National Theatre of Korea, 2024), Blackout (Arko Arts Theatre, 2018), Floating Land (Daehangno Arts Theatre, 2016), Almost Electra (National Theatre of Korea, 2014), and One Day, Four Doors (Arko Arts Theatre, 2009). As a playwright-director, she has created a series of interdisciplinary and site-specific works, among them An Ancient Memory of the Sun and Moon — selected as ARKO Repertory of the Year and officially invited to the Kiupiu Festival (2022) — and Alley Noir: In Search of Richard III (Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, 2021).
Between 2019 and 2020, she worked at This Planet Theatre (이행성 극장), an independent experimental space in Seoul, where she developed and staged Subway Ontology — Dancing Without Dancing and Alley Noir, deepening her practice at the intersection of spatial dramaturgy and devised performance. Her play collections One Day, Four Doors, and Liver and River are published in Korean.
Her work has been recognised with the 7th Yun Young-sun Theatre Award (2020), the 14th Cha Beom-seok Playwriting Award for Liver and River, the ARKO New Work of the Year for Blackout (2017), and the ARKO Excellent Play designation for Floating Land (2014).
This residency is funded by Arts Council Korea.
Past residents
2026
Tom Newlands (June 2026)
Tom Newlands is a neurodivergent writer from Scotland. His debut novel Only Here, Only Now won the McKitterick Prize, was runner-up for the ADCI Literary Prize, shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and named Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year. He is also the recipient of a Royal Society of Literature Scriptorium Award, a London Writers Award and a Creative Future Writers’ Award. He lives in London. Tom has been selected for a residency in Brussels in November 2026 with Passa Porta.
Website: Tomnewlands.com / Photo credit – Sophie Davidson.
Yaqi Xi (March-June 2026)
Yaqi Xi is a literary translator and postgraduate researcher based in Coventry, UK. Her practice-based PhD adopts an aurally attuned, ecological approach to translating and audio-remediating post-socialist and post-industrial Chinese fiction, creating ambient digital literary narratives embedded in the cultural soundscapes that shape these stories. Working with multimodal and intermedial methods – including field recordings, performative narration, and experimental sound design – she explores how ambient audio literature can generate affective atmospheres, amplify under-represented voices, and facilitate situated encounters for transnational audiences. Her work also positions literary translators as creative producers, engaging with digital-audio practices that open new pathways for how translated literature can be made and experienced.
She is currently working on translations of Ban Yu’s fiction; her English translation of his short story ‘Chorus’ (歌队) appeared in Eunoia Review in 2025. Beyond translation and audio-making, she also reads YA fiction for young audiences in community arts spaces.
Ecre Karadag (March-June 2026)
Ecre Karadag is a Japanese–English literary translator and publishing professional based in London. She holds an MA in Translation and a BA in Japanese and Linguistics from SOAS, University of London, and an MA in Japanese Studies from Sophia University in Tokyo. Alongside her translation work, she is Marketing & Communications Manager at the Poetry Translation Centre and facilitates a weekly community poetry group in London. She was the 2024–25 Japanese mentee on the National Centre for Writing’s Emerging Translators Mentorship, working with Polly Barton, and is currently working on multiple book-length literary translations, including the forthcoming Mari the Unwonderful Witch by Asako Yuzuki (Penguin Random House Children’s).
Image © Christy Ku
Elete Nelson-Fearon (March-June 2026)
Elete Nelson-Fearon is a translator, editor and educator working between Arabic, Spanish and English. Elete was a recipient of the 2025 American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) Travel Fellowship, as part of which she attended the ALTA48 conference and presented her translation of Palestinian Chilean play Irreversible Palestine. Elete has translated, and facilitated workshops around, plays from Mexico, Egypt, Cuba, Palestine and Spain.
Anaïs Van Ertvelde (April 2026)
Anaïs Van Ertvelde (b. 1988, she/her) is a Belgian writer and historian. She teaches at the art college KASK and writes books, essays, columns, and podcasts focusing on sexuality, gender, the body, and disability.
In 2017, she co-authored Vuile Lakens: Een hedendaagse visie op seksualiteit (Dirty Sheets: A Contemporary Vision of Sexuality) with writer and journalist Heleen Debruyne, based on their podcast series of the same name. Her essay Zorgangst (Care Anxiety), which explores feminist and crip fears surrounding receiving and providing care, was published in 2022. In 2024, she released Handicap: Een bevrijding (Disability: A Liberation), which won the prestigious J. Greshoff prize for the best essay in Dutch. In this book, she dissects what the world tells us about disability, and illuminates what disability can tell us about the world. Currently, she is working on her first novel.
This residency was part of our exchange with Passa Porta house of literature in Brussels.
Dieter Rogiers (April 2026)
Dieter Rogiers is a Belgian author, film critic and copywriter from Brussels. Selected in 2004 as one of ten promising young Flemish writers, Dieter has written several award-winning short stories and graphic novels, including De Wraak van de Walgvolgel (The Dodo’s Revenge), Tunguska and De parelvisser (The Pearl Fisher). His first novel, the Brussels-based Bot Mes (Dull Blade), received the Fred Braeckman Award for best Flemish thriller debut in 2023. Ambitious follow-up De Moskou Film Klub (The Moscow Film Club), set in mid-eighties Soviet Union, is expected later in 2026.
In Norwich, Dieter will be working on Een goede dood (A Good Death), an anecdotal narrative deeply rooted in the Asian kishōtenketsu storytelling tradition. The novel tackles loneliness, mourning and imperfect lives cut short, and is dedicated to his recently deceased mother.
This residency is part of our exchange with Passa Porta house of literature in Brussels.
Megan Bradbury (March 2026)
Megan Bradbury is a British writer, tutor, and mentor, and author of the critically acclaimed novel, Everyone is Watching (Picador, 2016). Described as a ‘beating heart of a novel’ by Ali Smith and ‘kaleidoscopic’ by Eimear McBride, the novel was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, and was listed as one of the Guardian’s Best Books of 2016. Bradbury is a graduate of the Creative Writing Prose Masters programme at the University of East Anglia, and has been awarded the Charles Pick Fellowship, an Author’s Foundation award, and numerous grants from Arts Council England. She has written for the Irish Times and the Times Literary Supplement. She is also an experienced artistic collaborator and a previous recipient of the Escalator Literature Prize. Image © Ali Smith
This residency is an Early Career Residency, exclusive to alumni of our Escalator New Writing Fellowships. Supported by The Fenton Arts Trust.
Alex Scarlett (March 2026)
Alex is a literary fiction writer based in Brighton. Her work explores themes of food, friendship and female rage. Since taking part in the Escalator programme, she has been shortlisted for The London Magazine Short Story Award (2017) and won first place in the 2018 Sunderland University in Association with Waterstones Short Story Award. Her most recent novel, Vanilla, earned her a place on the Curtis Brown Creative Course, and this is what she’ll work on during the residency. A closely observed study of trauma and the impulse to recover, Vanilla examines what a single moment of violence can take from you – and the price of attempting to retrieve it.
This residency is an Early Career Residency, exclusive to alumni of our Escalator New Writing Fellowships. Supported by The Fenton Arts Trust.
Amélie Prévost (March 2026)
Amélie Prévost is a spoken word artist. She has created many shows such as the solo performance Kamikaze du vendredi, and Fol ouvrage (Torcher des paillettes) with Elkahna Talbi (Queen Ka). With the help of Circuit paroles vivantes, these two shows went toured in Canada and France for several years. She was the World Cup poetry slam Champion in 2016 in Paris. She has published three books of poetry. Her latest, Osti d’pain blanc, published by Éditions de l’Hexagone, was a finalist for the CoPo des lycéens award in 2024. She is also a member of the group Primaires, les couleurs secondaires. The manuscript of their show Bleu noyade was published with Planète rebelle in 2025. Image © Julia Marois
Rachel McCrum (March 2026)
Rachel McCrum is a poet, performer, editor, and curator. Originally from Northern Ireland, she lived in Edinburgh, Scotland between 2010 and 2016, where she was the first BBC Scotland Poet in Residence and recipient of a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. Her debut collection The First Blast to Awaken Women Degenerate was translated by Jonathan Lamy and published in a bilingual edition with Mémoire d’encrier in Fall 2020, and was a finalist for the Le Prix de traduction de la Fondation Cole from the Quebec Writers’ Federation in 2022. Rachel is the vocalist for noise-poetry group Pigs&Wolves. Image © Nine Desbaillet
Jane Menczer (March 2026)
Jane Menczer won an Escalator New Writing Fellowship and a Grant for the Arts to help fund her first novel, An Unlikely Agent, which was published in 2017. She is currently completing a new novel, which explores the unreliability of memory and the limits of what we can know about other people, even those closest to us. Jane lives and works in Cambridge.
This residency is an Early Career Residency, exclusive to alumni of our Escalator New Writing Fellowships.
Nabeela Ahmed (January 2026)
Nabeela Ahmed is a writer, multilingual poet and spoken word artist. Her debut poetry collection, From Kashmir to Yorkshire, was launched this year at Bradford Literature Festival via Yaffle Press. She hosts Bradford Writes, which platforms regional published writers and she is responsible for organising the first public Pahari Mushaira in Britain through Intercultured Festival. She has featured on Word of Mouth with Michael Rosen on Radio 4 and The Verb. Her project The Pahari-Pothwari Literature Project delivered two new bilingual anthologies for City of Culture Bradford 2025. She has been the Travelling Poet for Word Up North this summer and one of the core poets for BBC’s Contains Strong Language.
Nabeela’s residency is part of the Visible Communities programme and is supported by the Francis W Reckitt Arts Trust.
2025
Annalise Peters, Csilla Toldy, Wen-yi Lee, David Colmer, Charlotte Van den Broeck, Leon Sofie Verraest, Sithuraj Ponraj, Joheun Lee, Luke Allan, Raquel Pena Martínez, Emily Barr, Choo Yi Feng, Clara Chow, Inbha, Melanie Lee, Esther Vincent Xueming, Choi Ji-In, and Sasti Gotama.
2024
Maarja Pärtna, Penny Boxall, Christina Ng, Soje, Gabriel Wu, Mikołaj Denderski, Shengchi Hsu, Yu Teng-Wei, Seo Su-Jin, Phương Anh, JC Niala, Elhum Shakerifar, Jerrold Yam, Lisabelle Tay, Marylyn Tan, and Joyce Chua.
2023
Vida Adamczewski, Maddie Mortimer, Cate West, Amarylis De Gryse, Anxhela Çikopano Hoxha, Marija Girevska, Laimonas Briedis, Akvilė Kavaliauskaitė, Gabriela Manova, Dragana Erjavšek, Meihan Boey, Andina Subarja, Noor H. Dee, Hsuan Pai and Amanda Addison, Paige Aniyah Morris, Wayne Rée, Carole Hailey, Csilla Toldy, Santanu Bhattacharya, Rabi Thapa, Nadiyah Abdullatif, Margot Douaihy, Anam Zafar, Lee Yeon Ju, Elhum Shakerifar, Tse Hao Guang, Sim Wai-chew, and Nur-El-Hudaa Jaffar.
2022
Akshita Nanda, Crispin Rodrigues, Daryl Qilin Yam, Megan Bradbury, Juliette Bernatchez, Arthur Reiji Morris, Shin Jung Keun, Hayahisa Tomiyasu, Dawid Mobolaji, Yelena Moskovich, Els Beerten, Penny Boxall, Soobin Kim, Clare Richards, Adrija Ghosh, Nadiyah Abdullatif, Lydia Hounat, Vineet Lal, Coco Mbassi, Shagufta Sharmeen Tania, Sylvie Marie, and Diana Evans.
2021
Yvette Siegert, Shagufta Sharmeen Tania, Charlotte Geater, Mattho Mandersloot, Anne Amienne, Carrie Patten, Julia Webb, Jennifer Anne Champion, Nuraliah Norasid, Nazry Bahrawi, Derek Barretto, Rabi Thapa, Gitanjali Patel, Sawad Hussain, Anam Zafar, Alexandra Birrell, Megan Bradbury, Liz Breslin, Lynn Buckle, Vahni Capildeo, Valur Gunnarsson, Marcin Wilk, and Shash Trevett.
2020
Thomas Heerma van Voss, Paddy Richardson, Anita Terpstra, Vahur Afanasjev, Motoyuki and Hitomi Shibata.
2019
Kim Heayon, Kang Young-sook, Katie Hale, Bregje Hofsted, Eva Meijer, Ekaterina Petrova, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Nuril Basri, Agustinus Wibowo, Jeremy Tiang, Anton Hur, JY Yang, Yoshitaka Haba, Kathleen Vereecken, Debby Lukito Goeyardi, and Reda Gaudiamo.
2018
Jun Sung Hyun, Jeongrye Choi, Ivanka Mogilska, and Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh.
