LITERARY PROFILE

Dato’ Dr M SHANmughalingam www.drshantri.com blog: www.drshantri.blogspot.com holds an Honours degree from the University of Malaya, a Masters from Harvard and a Doctorate from Oxford University. At Harvard he graduated first in class with Grade A in all eight subjects and was admitted to the Ph.D. programme directly without formal application.  At Oxford he won the second prize in the Short Story competition judged by Iris Murdoch and John Bayley, Literature Prof, the poetry prize and a graduate scholarship from Balliol College.

Shan’s short stories, poems and essays have appeared in national and international anthologies in France, India, Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore, the UK and the US, in universities (Harvard, Malaya, Oxford and Singapore) and in national literary journals (Dewan Bahasa). Marriage and Mutton Curry is his first solo collection of short fiction.

His poems were published in Malchin Testament: Malaysian Poems, Maya Press, January, 2017, his latest short story and poem were published in TRASH: A Southeast Asian Urban Anthology and the Little Basket 2016 both launched at the London Book and Screen Week, at Kinokuniya, K.L. and Borders, the Curve, April 2016. Within 3 days of its launch TRASH was on Kinokuniya’s weekly bestseller list. Another short story was co-published in ku.lit:asian literature for the language classroom by Pearson Education South Asia Pte Ltd and National Arts Council, launched at the S’pore writers festival. One of his poems is required reading for Form Two students in Malaysian schools. He is co-editor of An Anthology of Malaysian Poetry in English with Malay translation (Dewan Bahasa). One short story won the British Council Short Story Prize and another was an Editor’s choice from 1,450 entries for Ireland’s Fish International Short Story Prize. His poems are in New Voices of the Commonwealth an Anthology of Poetry in London with Nobel Prize winners, Derek Walcott, Wole Soyinka and Seamus Heaney, ISIS, Balliol College Annual Record (Oxford) and Asianist Asia in Paris. Participant and read own work at the 26th Cambridge Seminar on the Contemporary British Writer, Cambridge Univ., U.K. Participating British writers included Doris Lessing, Muriel Spark, David Lodge, Malcolm Bradbury etc. Reviews: For short stories, Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong), The Hindu (India), The Statesman (India), the Edge, New Straits Times, Kaki Seni. Articles: Malaysian Culture Group, Newsletter. Interviewed on various Malaysian TV programmes e.g. profiling Royal Prof. Ungku Aziz ex Vice Chancellor Univ of Malaya and Dato’ Dr Usman Awang, national poet laureate.

Dramatised Performance Readings of short stories and poems at the ASEAN India Writers Festival, S’pore, Jan 2018. Nottingham Univ., Jan, 2017, the Georgetown Literary Festival, Penang, Dec 2016, Readings, Seksan, Kuala Lumpur, the Cooler Lumpur Writers Festival, a 2½ hour’s solo Performance Reading at the English Language Teaching Centre, Education Ministry in Nilai, N.S., to 200 lecturers, teachers, trainee teachers and students, Radio Fremantle, W. Australia, Nat. Univ. S’pore (NUS), Oxford Cambridge Society to 400 students, Performance Poetry with Director, Apples and Snakes, UK’s leading performance poetry organization, 11 th Biennial Symposium on Literatures and Cultures of Asia-Pacific Region, NUS, Dome Literary Readings, NUS with Prof Edwin Thumboo, Taylor’s College, Creative Writing class to 120 students, Univ KM, Voice and Place: Writers’ Forum, Substation Guinness Theatre, S’pore, Garden International School, K.L., Lycee Francais de Singapour, Symposium Singapore-Malaysian Literature, Univ.PM, Creativity and Poetry Classes, S’pore Management Univ, Malaysian Culture Group and Book Club, IIUniv.M and Litfest Univ.KM. At Bookstores: Borders, London, S’pore, Kinokuniya, MPH, World Poetry Reading K.L. at Planetarium, at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka and at Univ. Malaya, KL, at BFM Radio Station and at several national and international readings led by the then national poet laureate, Dato’ Dr Usman Awang.

Producers from Australia and New Zealand have offered to make movies of two of his short stories. His work has been the subject of theses in universities in Malaysia and Germany. Peter Carey, twice winner of the Booker Prize and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, in his ‘My Life As A Fake acknowledged ‘Malaysian writer, Dr M. Shanmughalingam, not only offered advice and friendship but also allowed me to read his unfinished autobiography, which proved invaluable to my understanding of the Tamils…’ and wrote that he ‘hugely enjoyed Victoria and Her Kimono and the humour in Shan’s other stories.’

He was an interviewer on international and current affairs, film critic on Malaysian TV, and radio and a member of advisory panels to leading national literary and cultural journals in Dewan Bahasa and the informal advisory panel to TV3. He was interviewed on Malaysian TV profiling Royal Prof. Ungku Aziz ex Vice Chancellor Univ of Malaya and Usman Awang and quoted in TIME magazine cover story, Dec. 9, 1996 on Tun Dr Mahathir, then Prime Minister of Malaysia.

Shan is now Managing Director of Trilogic Sdn Bhd. He sits on the Board of Trustees, the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER) and the international/ national advisory panel to the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute (ASLI). He served at Petronas from 1979 to 1991 as General Manager and at the Treasury, Ministry of Finance from 1962 to 1978 as Deputy Secretary (Economic). He is a Fellow of the Economic Development Institute, World Bank, Washington DC. He was on the Board of Selectors, Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, the Committee of the Malaysian Administrative and Diplomatic Service (PTD) Alumni Association; VIOBA Foundation board and chairman of its Scholarship Committee. He was a Director of several publicly listed companies. On invitation by Harvard Univ. he helped in the design of a new Executive Program for Leaders in Development: Managing Economic and Political Reform developed jointly by Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Institute for International Development, Harvard Univ, Cambridge, Mass, USA.