Gwee Li Sui
Gwee Li Sui (Chinese: 魏俐瑞, born 22 August 1970) is a literary critic, a poet, and a graphic artist from Singapore. He wrote what was arguably Singapore’s first full-length graphic novel, Myth of the Stone, in 1993. He then published a well-received volume of humorous verse, Who Wants to Buy a Book of Poems?, in 1998. His poetry is known for its versatility, engaging a wide range of styles and moods, and is featured in several anthologies and literary journals. He was also the editor of a volume of critical essays on post-Independence Singaporean and Malaysian literature, Sharing Borders II, and one of the editors for a bilingual collection of Singaporean and Malaysian poems, From the Window of the Epoch. He recently edited Telltale: Eleven Stories, a radical anthology of short stories by six Singaporean writers born after Singapore Independence in 1965.
Gwee began education at the now-defunct MacRitchie Primary School and then continued at Anglo-Chinese Secondary School, Anglo-Chinese Junior College, and the National University of Singapore. He graduated with a First-Class Honours degree in English literature in 1995 and was awarded the NUS Society Gold Medal for Best Student in English that year. His Honours thesis had been a study of Günter Grass's novel, 'The 'Tin Drum'' (German: Die Blechtrommel). After completing his Masters under a research scholarship for work on another German writer Hermann Broch, he worked as a Senior Tutor at the NUS Department of English Language and Literature for two years. In 1999, he was given an overseas scholarship to pursue his doctorate in eighteenth-century literature at Queen Mary, University of London. Gwee wrote his thesis on the discursive influence of Newtonianism on poetry from the English Enlightenment to early European Romanticism.
Returning to lecture at the National University of Singapore, Gwee was an Assistant Professor in English literature between 2002 and 2009. During this time, he was also a long-standing staff advisor to the NUS Literary Society, which groomed many of. Academic topics he has written on include the Reformation, early modern science in the West and East, the Enlightenment, European Romanticism, German idealism, Protestant theology, modern German literature, and literary theory. In the area of Singaporean literature, Gwee has contributed several articles on its poetic history up to the present and consistently challenged the standard assumptions made in the field. In 2010, Gwee was invited to be a resident-writer at Toji Cultural Centre, South Korea.
Gwee is an editor of an international online poetry journal, Softblow, and an Asian commentary website, New Asia Republic. He has been on the judging panel for numerous top literary awards, including the Singapore Literature Prize, the National Arts Council Young Artist Award, and the Singapore Cultural Medalllon. In 2009, Gwee notoriously wrote a Facebook note, which addressed the controversy then over how some Christian women had seized control of the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), an established women rights' advocacy group in Singapore. "Christians Against AWARE Takeover!”, and its follow-ups, called on Christians to reject such action in spite of their religious affiliation, and the notes quickly went viral. They were reproduced on numerous websites and cited in Singapore's mainstream press. By the time the scandal was over, the original note had collected over 1,000 supporters.
Select Bibliography
Graphic Novel
- Myth of the Stone (East Asia Book Services, 1993) ISBN: 9789810048372
Poetry
- Who Wants to Buy a Book of Poems? (Landmark Books, 1998) ISBN: 9813065192
Monograph
- Mein Kampf Re-Examined (National University of Singapore Department of English Language and Literature, 1996) ISBN: 9789810081461
Edited Volumes
- Sharing Borders: Studies in Contemporary Singaporean-Malaysian Literature II (National Library Board and National Arts Council of Singapore, 2009) ISBN: 9789810839123 (hbk), 9789810839130 (pbk)
- From the Window of the Epoch: An Anthology of Malaysian and Singaporean Poems, edited with Shamsudin Othman, Mohamed Pitchay Gani bin Mohamed Abdul Aziz, Tan Chee Lay, and Seetha Lakshmi (National Institute of Translation of Malaysia and National Arts Council of Singapore, 2010) ISBN: 9789830684802
- Telltale: Eleven Stories (Ethos Books, 2010) ISBN: 9789810861520