Daren Shiau

Daren Shiau, BBM, PBM (Chinese: 萧维龙, born 1971), is a Singaporean novelist, poet, conservationist, and lawyer in private practice qualified in Singapore, England and Wales.

A Fulbright scholar, and an alumnus of the East-West Center in Honolulu established by the United States Congress in 1960,[1] Shiau was the Visiting Writer in Fall 2003 to the University of California, Berkeley.

He is regarded as one of the ‘Class of 95’, the pre-digital literary wave of Singapore writers which includes Boey Kim Cheng, Heng Siok Tian, Yong Shu Hoong and Alvin Pang.

In 2007, an academic edition of Heartland was adopted into a textbook for Singapore secondary schools offering English literature in their GCE O-Level curriculum.

[1] In 2015, Heartland was selected by The Business Times as one of the Top 10 English Singapore books from 1965 to 2015, alongside titles by Arthur Yap, Goh Poh Seng and Philip Jeyaretnam.

Writers included Goh Poh Seng, Lee Tzu Pheng, Eric Khoo, Toh Hsien Min, Cyril Wong, Alfian Sa’at and Pooja Nansi.

Literary critic, Dr Gwee Li Sui, has described Coast as "nothing short of a manifesto, a call to stretch out the tent poles of language and go in search of an idiom for making destiny".

[14] In 2015, Shiau collaborated with indie band Riot in Magenta to present a performance at the Esplanade Recital Studio as part of the Singapore Writers Festival.

[16] At the National University of Singapore, Shiau was one of the first chairmen of the pioneering sustainability and environmental activism NGO, Students Against Violation of the Earth (SAVE).

[28] In 2016, Shiau was further appointed to the Management Committee of the Garden City Fund, an Institute of Public Character in Singapore originally established by patron Lee Kuan Yew, which complements the National Parks Board's greening and biodiversity conservation efforts.

During Shiau's tenure, the National Parks Board has undertaken climate resilience initiatives such as mangrove restoration along the northern coastline of Pulau Ubin, and wildlife habitat enhancement in areas as such as Clementi Forest and the Southern Ridges.

[14] Other appointments have included the Films Appeal Committee of the Media Development Authority of Singapore, and the Supervisory Panel of the Government's Feedback Unit.

Daren Shiau in 2021
Shiau in 2021