Literary Profile

Dato Dr M SHANmughalingam 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 the famous novelist, Iris Murdoch and John Bayley, Prof. of Literature, sponsored by ISIS, Oxford University and The Observer, the Poetry prize at Balliol College and a graduate scholarship from Balliol College.
Shan's short stories and poems appear in international anthologies (London and Singapore), in universities (Harvard, Malaya, Oxford and Singapore) and in national literary journals (Dewan Bahasa).  He is co-editor of An Anthology of Malaysian Poetry in English with Malay translation (Dewan Bahasa).  His work has been published in France, India, Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore, the UK, the US and read in Australia including one as the Editor’s First choice from 1, 450 entries for Ireland’s Fish International Short Story Prize, the Commonwealth Anthology of Poetry in London with Nobel Prizewinners, Derek Walcott, Wole Soyinka and Seamus Heaney and Asianist Asia in Paris.  He read from his own work at the Seminar on the Contemporary British Writer, Cambridge Univ., U.K.
Dramatised Performance Readings of short stories and poems:-An hour’s solo Performance Reading, Nat. Univ. S’pore (NUS), to 400 students Oxford Cambridge Society, 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 (120pax), UKM , Voice and Place: Writers’ Forum, Substation Guinness Theatre, S’pore, Garden International School, KL, Lycee Francais de Singapour, Symposium Singapore-Malaysian Literature, UPM, Creativity and Poetry Classes, S’pore Management Univ, Malaysian Culture Group and Book Club, I I U M.,KL and Litfest UKM, Bookstores: Borders, London, S’pore, Kinokuniya , MPH, MV, KL, Subang,  World Poetry Reading K.L. at Planetarium, at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka and at Univ. Malaya, KL.  He has just read one of his short stories at BFM Radio Station.

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.”