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A man seeks resolution when the spirit of his abusive mother calls from the grave. A sex worker finds temporary salvation with a returning Australian tourist professing his love. The afterlife plays host to a vast museum dedicated to jetsam from the living world. In this debut fiction collection, these imagined worlds are set variously in plural Singapores, Southeast Asia and beyond, and illuminate the urgent need to connect even after death.
“Brimming with debris and surreal dreamers, The Waiting Room makes phantasms of its tenderly rendered lives. Choo Yi Feng tells of queer Singapores and their ecologies with cluttered shores, open wounds, temporary bodies, and a fateful voice. I'll be watching what he comes out with next.”
—Wen-yi Lee, author of The Dark We Know
Choo Yi Feng (he/him) is an intertidal explorer, environmental activist, ecologist and fiction writer. His writing has been published in Foglifter Journal, Queer Southeast Asia, PR&TA, Alluvium: The Journal of Literary Shanghai, Bayou Magazine, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing and Curios, the annual student journal of Tembusu College at NUS. His story “Spider Hunters” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his aspirations are divided between being a fiction writer and a marine biologist. The Waiting Room is his debut collection of short fiction.

Authors

The Waiting Room