Look inside the book
This seventh issue of LONTAR presents speculative writing from and about Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Laos, the Philippines, Indonesia and Korea.
Inside these pages, you’ll find: a remembrance of ghostbusters disguised as lion dancers by Zen Cho; the subversive power of jazz in a future North Vietnam by TR Napper; a cautionary tale of writing one’s perfect lover into existence by Vida Cruz; an expedition to hunt a supernatural tiger in colonial Singapore by Manish Melwani; the relationship between death and a mysterious delivery truck by James Penha; a fateful meeting of the last two Eurasians in Singapore by Melissa De Silva; a critical appreciation of the novels of Eka Kurniawan by Tiffany Tsao; a comic on schoolyard bullying and redemption by Elvin Ching; and speculative poetry from Bryan Thao Worra, Zeny May Recidoro, Brandon Marlon, Subashini Navaratnam, Russ Hoe, Christina Sng, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, Cyril Wong.
LONTAR is the world’s only biannual literary journal focusing on Southeast Asian speculative fiction. Our many contributors have won major literary awards in Singapore, USA, UK, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.
“Learning real things about a region of the world relatively unknown to me is an unexpected bonus of the great stories in LONTAR. With each tale, I was allowed a view through the eyes of someone whose experiences and orientation are so far separated from my own and yet so similar that the journey is wondrous.”
—Andrea Pawley, Weightless Books
Jason Erik Lundberg, founding editor, was born in Brooklyn, New York, and has lived in Singapore since 2007. He is the author of a dozen books, including the collection Strange Mammals (2013) and the Bo Bo and Cha Cha children’s picture book series; he is also the series editor of the Best New Singaporean Short Stories anthology series, editor of Fish Eats Lion (2012, 2014), and co-editor of A Field Guide to Surreal Botany (2008) and Scattered, Covered, Smothered (2004).
Kristine Ong Muslim, poetry editor, is the author of nine books, including the short story collections Age of Blight (Unnamed Press, 2016), Butterfly Dream (Snuggly Books, 2016), and The Drone Outside (Eibonvale Press, 2017), as well as the poetry collections Lifeboat (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2015), Meditations of a Beast (Cornerstone Press, 2016), and Black Arcadia (University of the Philippines Press, 2017).
Adan Jimenez, comics editor, became an immigrant himself when he moved to Singapore after graduating from New York University with a Literature degree. He previously co-wrote a children’s book, Twisted Journeys #22: Hero City. He loves comics, LEGO®, books, movies, games (analog and video), Doctor Who and sandwiches, and one day hopes to own a store that sells all these things.
