Alvin Pang

Alvin Pang (Chinese: 冯啟明; pinyin: Féng Qǐ Míng; born 1972, Singapore) received the Young Artist Award (Literature) in 2005 by the National Arts Council Singapore.

His first volume of poems, Testing the Silence (Ethos Books, 1997), was listed as one of the Top Ten Books of 1997 by The Straits Times and was short listed for the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) Book Award in 1998/9.

He served on the organising committees of the Singapore Writer's Festival in 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2003.

He is the co-editor of the seminal work No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry (Ethos Books, 2000), one of the Straits Times' Top Ten Books for 2000 and a key text on university syllabuses.

In 2001, he was one of a quartet of bilateral editors who developed a joint anthology of Singapore-Filipino love poetry.

He led a delegation of Singapore writers to Australia in July 2001 and another to the Austin International Poetry Festival in April 2002.

He holds a First Class Honours degree in English literature from the University of York and an Honorary Fellowship in Writing from the University of Iowa's International Writing Program (2002).

It was released as Love Gathers All: The Philippines-Singapore Anthology of Love Poetry (Anvil Press / Ethos Books, 2002), and won the Global Filipino Literary Award for Poetry in 2003.

Pang is also co-editor, along with the poet John Kinsella, of Over There, an anthology of Singapore and Australian poetry, and of Double Skin, a bilingual anthology of Italian and Singapore poets (with Turin-based poet and editor Tiziano Fratus).

Pang was the Featured Poet in the Spring 2002 issue of the Atlanta Review (USA), a journal which counts Nobel Prize laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott among its contributors; he is also among the select few poets celebrated in its 10th Anniversary edition.

His work has also been featured in publications such as The Wolf (UK), English Review (UK), Salt (Australia), Paper Tiger (Australia), Australian Poetry Journal, Bonnier's Literary Magazine, Slope (USA), Washington Square Review (USA), Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Interlogue: Studies in Singapore Literature, and RHYTHMS: The Millennium Anthology of Singapore Poetry, for which he was the English Language Poetry Editor.

City of Rain (Ethos Books, 2003), his second volume of poetry, was the only Singaporean book to be named to the Straits Times Top Ten List for 2003.

He featured at the 2003 Edinburgh International Book Festival and the 2006 Sydney Writer's Festival as an invited international poet.

He has also read at literary festivals and events in Albany, Bali, Byron Bay, Cape Town, Darwin, Finland, Geraldton, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, London, Ledbury, the Philippines, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Slovenia, L'viv, Zagreb and elsewhere.

In 2003, Pang co-founded The Literary Centre (Singapore), a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to literary development, interdisciplinary capacity, multicultural communication, and positive social change, which he continues to direct.

He is also a founder and coordinator of "WORDFEAST 2004" – Singapore's first international poetry festival.

For his contributions, he was conferred the Singapore Youth Award (Arts and Culture) in 2007, and the JCCI Foundation Education Award in 2008.

He is listed in the Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English (2nd Edition).

Pang's work also appears in the 2008 international anthology: Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (W.W.Norton, 2008) and The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem (Penguin, 2018), among other international anthologies.

His poetry has appeared at the Poetry Society and Poetry Library in London; and has been staged by professional theatre companies in the US, Malaysia and Singapore.

It has also been exhibited in the Asian Civilisations Museum, expressed as sound sculpture, screened on national television, and requested and read on BBC Radio.

Pang's poetry have been translated into more than 20 languages.

A recipient of several Singapore International Foundation and National Arts Council grants, Pang frequently assists the National Arts Council in literary projects.

In 2009 he curated the anthology Tumasik: Contemporary Writing from Singapore (Autumn Hill Books, USA).

He was the 2009 Poet-In-Residence at Raffles Institution, his father's and his alma mater.

Pang has made several international appearances in support of Singaporean writing.

His two 2012 volumes of poetry--Other Things and Other Poems (Brutal:Croatia), Teorija strun ["String Theory"] (JKSD:Slovenia) and When the Barbarians Arrive (Arc publications,UK)--are the first full volumes of poetry by a Singaporean poet to be published in their respective countries.

He was a participant at the Worlds 2012 literary gathering in Norwich, and represented Singapore at the Poetry Parnassus festival – part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad in London.

A former teacher, civil servant, journalist, columnist and online producer, Pang pioneered an early online poetry anthology, The Poetry Billboard, and a Literary Singapore news website and mailing list.

He has also contributed an occasional column to the Straits Times commentary section on technology, culture, society and other issues.

In 2012, he was appointed to the advisory board of the International Poetry Studies Institute, based in the University of Canberra.

He also serves on the international editorial board of Axon, a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the characteristics of creativity and the creative process.

Pang consults on web, editorial and strategic communications, and research for a range of corporate and public sector organisations, and facilitates training and development programmes for schools and broader audiences.

He is also Editor-in-Chief of a professional public sector journal, Ethos.

Poetry

Creative Prose

Anthologies (as editor)

Translations

In 2020, he was awarded a PhD in Writing from RMIT University, and appointed to the honorary position of Adjunct Professor of RMIT University in 2021.