Hi! I’m Wen-yi. I’m a speculative fiction writer from Singapore, and my little bio line usually says I like writing about girls with bite, feral nature, and ghosts. My debut novel The Dark We Know, a YA horror inspired by Spring Awakening and the Pied Piper myth, has some of all three and is forthcoming from Gillian Flynn Books/Zando Young Readers in 2024.

I also write speculative short fiction and the occasional non-fiction piece. Here’s some highlights:

Flash fiction

• “Icariana”: tender post apocalyptic girl-with-wings x cynical-desert-girl flash fiction

• "The Lighthouse Keeper’s Guide to Pulau Belakang Mati": flash fic, war trauma (specifically the sook ching massacre), ghosts on beaches

Short fiction

• “Lay My Stomach On Your Scales”: tw eating disorders; a teenage girl who detaches her head from her body crosses paths with the pretty popular girl who steals body parts

• “Laura Lau Will Drain You Dry”: a jennifer’s-body-esque feral teenage girl revenge story

• "Hundred-Handed One": ocean body slipstream strangeness, anti-shark finning, environmental themes or religious trauma? you decide

• “The 74th District”: bureaucracy's next top model: necromancy

Non-fction

• "Lady Macbeth, the pontianak, and the compelling power of the monstrous feminine": essay on monstrous girls, girlboss queens and southeast asian female ghosts

• “The resonance of hunger: Food, Asian family and colonialism in Trang Thanh Tran’s She Is A Haunting”

I want this newsletter to be a space for me to dissect those stories, share parts of my journey as I go, reflect, make coherent the essays I have bouncing around my brain, and to just be a space where I drop thoughts about books.

Thank you for reading!