About the author
Hwee Hwee Tan studied English Literature at the University of East Anglia, where she graduated with First Class Honours. She later went on to receive her Masters in English from the University of Oxford. She also has a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing from New York University, where she received the New York Times Fellowship.
Publishing and Fiction-writing Background:
Her short stories have won numerous awards with the BBC. She published her first novel, Foreign Bodies (Penguin UK), aged 22, while she was still a graduate student at the University of Oxford. Foreign Bodies was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for being "the first novel by a Singaporean author to receive critical acclaim in the UK and the US". In 2001, she published her second novel, Mammon Inc (Penguin UK), which received rave reviews in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand.
Journalism Background:
Tan’s first job in journalism was in New York, as a staff writer for Adweek’s Marketing Technology magazine and website, covering marketing news in the technology sector.
When she returned to Singapore after 12 years in Europe and US, Tan worked for the Executive Lifestyle section of the Business Times.
She then worked as a freelance journalist, writing for TIME, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Straits Times, the South China Morning Post and the BBC.
Awards
Tan has received numerous awards from the National University of Singapore, the New York Times Foundation and the British Broadcasting Corporation. In 2003, she won the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Council of Singapore, which is the highest award given by the government to an artist under 35. Mammon Inc also won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2004.