Bernice Chauly is the author of six books of poetry and prose: Once We Were There (2017, Winner of the Penang Monthly Book Prize), Onkalo (2013, “Direct, honest and powerful” —JM Coetzee), Growing Up With Ghosts (2011, Winner of the POPULAR-The Star Readers’ Choice Award for Non-Fiction), The Book of Sins (2008), Lost in KL (2008), and going there and coming back (1997).

Born in George Town, Penang to Chinese-Punjabi teachers, she read Education, TESL and English Literature in Canada as a government scholar. For over 20 years, she has worked extensively in the creative industries as a writer, teacher, photographer, actor and filmmaker and has won multiple awards for her work and her contribution to the arts in Malaysia.

Chauly has served as Festival Director of the George Town Literary Festival since 2011, the only state-funded literary festival in Malaysia. She was also an Honorary Fellow at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP) in 2014, and was awarded residencies at the Nederlands Letterenfonds in Amsterdam and the Sitka Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska. She is the founder and Director of the KL Writers Workshop, and currently lectures at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC). She lives in Kuala Lumpur with her two daughters.