Woman at Work

Maureen is a writer who spent over twenty years wordsmithing in her legal and corporate finance roles before throwing in the towel to focus on her creative writing. Since 2019, Maureen has published creative works in literary magazines such as Cha, Mekong Review, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) as well as Imprint, WiPS’ anthology. She has also been shortlisted in several international competitions, most recently for flash fiction in the UK’s Bridport Prize 2021.

However, Maureen’s ultimate dream is to write for children. Having published children’s short stories with Oxford University Press and Marshall Cavendish, she is currently working on her first middle-grade novel set in her home country, Malaysia. Maureen also finds it rewarding and inspiring to work with young people, having recently started giving school talks and workshops in Hong Kong, her home for the last 14 years.

One of Maureen’s biggest regrets is that she didn’t become a librarian as she can’t think of a better way to spend her days than reading. In between parenting, thinking up stories, and writing, she makes up for lost time by reading with her children and reviewing books that they fall in love with on www.storiesthatstaywithus.com. A lifelong supporter of children’s causes and literacy, Maureen also volunteers regularly with various charities and social organizations including Rebooked HK and Bring Me A Book. She enjoys social media – in small doses – and her amateur photography, fountain pen collection and musings can be found on Twitter and Instagram @maureen_sy_tai.

Robyn Flemming is an author and freelance copyeditor based in Australia. She lived in Hong Kong from 1986 to 1993. With Polly Yu, she was a founding member of HKWiPS and the Society’s first president. She has freelanced for over 35 years and has clients in Australia, Asia, the Middle East and North America.

For the past six years, Robyn has been writing a memoir about her roller-coaster life, including her years in Hong Kong and the first half of the decade she roamed the world as an “editor without borders” / digital nomad (2010–2020).

Skinful: A Memoir of Addiction will be published in Australia and New Zealand in January 2022 by Brio Books. (Pre-orders are available @ https://www.bookdepository.com/Skinful-Robyn-Flemming/9781922598479.)

Skinful is structured around four turning points. Each of these was an opportunity to ask: Who am I? What life do I want to live? We all emerge into adulthood bent out of shape to a lesser or greater degree by our experiences as children. The rest of our life’s story is the result of our own doing, as Professor Joseph Campbell has said. We can change course at any time. Whatever has us in its grip, it’s never too late to make a new path to a different future. Each one of us can take a hero’s journey.

Now that all the hard work of writing her book – and editing it down from a 130,000-word beast to a tightly paced 80,000 words – is done, Robyn is enjoying this next stage of the publishing process: promotion and publicity in the lead-up to launch.

robynfle@gmail.com
www.robynflemming.com.au
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Bhakti Mathur grew up in Delhi, India, and with a graduate degree in economics and a postgraduate degree in finance from Delhi University pursued a career in banking for 22 years. In 2000, she and her husband moved to Hong Kong, which she now calls home and where both her children were born.

In 2010, unable to find a picture book on Holi, the Indian festival of colours, for her young sons, she decided to write one herself. This started the “Amma Tell Me” series, a collection of children’s picture books about Hindu festivals and mythology with 13 published titles.

She received an MFA in creative writing from Hong Kong University in 2017, then had her two course manuscripts published by Penguin India as Amma Take Me to the Golden Temple and Amma Take Me to Tirupati. These began the “Amma Take Me” series, exploring different faiths through their important places of worship. The series has four published titles.

Bhakti has conducted story-telling sessions and reading and writing workshops at schools and literary festivals in Hong Kong, Singapore and India. She freelances as a journalist and writes features on culture, health and fitness for the South China Morning Post.

Bhakti also loves hiking and running – she ran the New York Marathon in 2017 – and is currently studying yoga through the Iyengar Yoga in Depth programme. An avid reader, when not writing or chasing after her young boys, Bhakti is happiest curled up with a book in one hand and a hot cup of chai in the other.

www.bhaktimathur.com

Instagram @ammatellme

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Elizabeth Vongsaravanh is a Hungarian artist who has lived in Laos for more than two decades. She received a degree in English studies in Hungary after spending two years in Canada out of spite for not getting accepted into art school. 

She kick-started her artistic journey after settling into her new home in Laos, adapting quickly to the unfamiliar environment, culture and traditions, which are manifested and reflected in her pieces. Her works of art, poetry and design are the result of attention to detail both metaphysical and the experimental in a world of her own making. Her artistic expression is a mixed media of emotion, experience and self-examination. 

Stunned by the intricate beauty of hand-woven textiles and silk in Laos, Elizabeth opened Fusion Gallery in 2003. She created her first designs to honour her mother and to define herself, and as she did so, like-minded travellers discovered her shop and connected with pieces that made them feel beautiful. 

In 2009, a venture of passion had her open a bar in Luang Prabang, which is now not only the town’s oldest bar, but to her great pride is listed among the world’s best bars. She believes that everything is personal and that there is always a little magic, even in the darkest of times. 

Her poetry has been shared with many over the years, and her books of poems, “My Mekong Secret” and “Hours of Strange”, will be soon available at her cherished cocktail bar in Luang Prabang, Icon Klub. 

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Elsie graduated from HKU, majoring in English, and taught at King’s College, Hong Kong, before leaving for her master’s programme at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her husband’s studies and work took them to Columbus, Ohio, then Chicago where she acquired a master’s degree in library science. Raising their three sons in Chicago, Elsie balanced her role as homemaker with a career as a librarian. In 1987, the family moved back to Toronto where Elsie worked with the Toronto Public Library. At the same time, she took creative writing courses at Toronto’s Humber School for Writers. Her first novel Hui Gui, about China and Hong Kong in the 20th century, was nominated for ForeWord Magazine’s Best Fiction Award, 2005.

Elsie’s extensive travels with her husband for his work have taken her to exotic places. These she used as locations for her subsequent novels. Heart of the Buddha, set in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, was published by Greenleaf Publishing, Texas, in 2009, and nominated for ForeWord Magazine’s Best Multicultural Fiction Award. Elsie won the inaugural Saphira Prize for her manuscript “Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak”, published by WiPS in 2014. All three published novels are distributed worldwide.

Since 2015, Elsie and her husband have made California their home. Her latest novel, “Sea Fever”, a mystery thriller set in Kazakhstan, Central Asia, is the product of much travel and research in that post-Soviet republic. It is looking for a publisher at this time.

At age 23, Rinkoo worked briefly for the now defunct Asiaweek magazine, where she received her first byline. Shortly after the publication of her book review of Memoirs of a Geisha, she accepted a job offer from a corporate giant, and like a reliable Gen Xer, she followed the money for the next 22 years.

While sourcing and supply chain served her well throughout her career, in her mid-40s, she decided it was time to pursue a rather different purpose. Rinkoo is now an executive coach and leadership facilitator. At around the same time, she also came home to her writing.

Rinkoo received her MFA (Dist.) from HKU in 2017, and was a recipient of The HKU MFA Threshold Fellowship in 2020 during the course of which she completed her manuscript, Losing Yashoda, a tribute to the life and loss of her beloved mother who died in 2012, and her father whose death followed shortly thereafter.

Recently, Rinkoo was requested to develop a workshop for a global company on the therapeutic benefits of writing. Excited by the prospect of combining corporate training with writing, Rinkoo created a workshop that was very well received, resulting in an invitation to repeat it.

In between coaching clients and delivering workshops, Rinkoo writes personal essays and short stories, and is a volunteer editor for the SPCA. Someday, she will share Losing Yashoda with the rest of the world, but not just yet. She also maintains a blog about personal development and leadership at http://www.unlockedcoaching.com/category/blog/.