Amanda Lee Koe

Amanda Lee Koe was born in 1988 in Singapore, where she also grew up. She has lived in Beijing, Berlin and Bangkok, and is now based in New York.Her first collection of short stories, »Ministry of Moral Panic«, appeared in 2013. Set against the backdrop of the linguistic, cultural and national diversity of the South East Asian island nation of Singapore, Amanda Lee Koe tells stories of love lost, written with great empathy and in a tone that is both laconic and melancholic. »Ministry of Moral Panic«, was awarded the Singapore Literature Prize and named one of the ten best English books of the last fifty years in Singapore. It was also shortlisted for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s International Literature Award as well as the Frankfurt Book Fair’s LiBeraturpreis.Amanda Lee Koe’s debut novel, »Delayed Rays of A Star«, published in 2019, was an NPR Best Book of the Year. It won the Henfield Prize, awarded by Columbia University’s School of the Arts. The jumping off point for the novel begins from a real-life photograph of Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong and Leni Riefenstahl, taken at a chance encounter at a party in 1928, then splinters out into a kaleidoscope of the various lives – both fictional and historical – that each woman has touched, changed or even ruined, across various eras and cities, including Berlin, Los Angeles, Beijing, and Paris. Praised by LitHub for its »intimate, cinematic exploration of identity and the cultural complexities of womanhood«, »Delayed Rays of A Star« showcases Koe’s ability to deftly weave historical and personal narratives into a cohesive tapestry.Amanda Lee Koe has received fellowships from the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin, the New York Foundation for the Arts, PEN America, the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, the National Arts Council of Singapore, and the Fondation Jan Michalski.