BIOGRAPHY
Balli Kaur Jaswal is an award-winning Singaporean novelist and a former writing fellow at the University of Angelia. She has previously taught creative writing at Yale-NUS College and Nanyang Technological University.
Her debut novel, Inheritance (2013), was awarded the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelist Award in 2014. Her second book. Sugarbread (2014), was a finalist for the 2015 Epigram Books Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for three other awards: the Popular Readers’ Choice Awards 2016 in the English (Adult) Books category, the 2017 Singapore Books Awards and the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize.
Her critically acclaimed third novel, Erotic Stories for Punjabi Women, was released internationally by Harper Collins in 2017. The translation rights for the book has been sold in a number of countries, including Poland, Germany, China and Estonia. In 2018, it was named a book club pick by both Reese Witherspoon’s book club and The Girly Book Club.
In April 2019, Balli published her latest work, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters, which was already featured in the Chicago Tribune’s list of 10 books to read in April prior to the book’s release.
Balli’s other works have appeared in several publications and periodicals, such as Best Australian Short Stories, Harpers Bazaar and The New York Times. Inheritance was adapted into a film for the 2017 Singapore International Festival of the Arts and the film rights for Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows was acquired by Scott Free Productions and Film Four in the UK. She has also been interviewed by The Straits Times, Singapore Tatler and Southeast Asia Globe.
Outside of writing, Balli has conducted workshops at international writers festivals on topics like creative writing, global citizenship and using literature as a medium for social justice advocacy. She is currently pursuing her PhD at Nanyang Technological University.
Author Biography © Balli Kaur Jaswal. Author Photo © Mindy Tan. All rights reserved.
