Hwee Hwee Tan grew up in Singapore and the Netherlands.
Education:
She read English Literature at the University of East Anglia, where she graduated with First Class Honours. She has a Masters in English Studies (1500-1660) from the University of Oxford and a MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. She won a New York Times Fellowship during her stint at New York University.
Publishing and fiction-writing background:
Her short stories have appeared in PEN International, New Writing 6 ed AS Byatt and has won numerous awards with the BBC. She published her first novel, Foreign Bodies (Penguin), aged 22, while she was still a graduate student at the University of Oxford. Foreign Bodies was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for being "the first novel by a Singaporean author to receive critical acclaim in the UK and the US". In 1997, she moved to New York to study creative writing at New York University. In 2001, she published her second novel, Mammon Inc (Penguin), which received widespread critical acclaim in Asia and spent over two months on the WH Smith Top 20 bestseller list in Asia. Mammon Inc was also adapted for the stage during the 2002 Singapore Arts Festival, where it sold out all its performances. She has appeared in Harper's Bazaar Asian "New Power Generation" issue for being one of the most influential writers in the region, and was featured in Elle's "Hot List" for 2002.
After she returned to Singapore in 2001, she worked as a writer for the Executive Lifestyle section of the Business Times. Her beat and passions include film, food, books, music, fashion, architecture and design.
She has also freelanced as a journalist and her credits include TIME, Harper's Bazaar, ELLE, the Face, Far Eastern Economic Review and the BBC.
Tan has received numerous awards from the National Arts Council, the National University of Singapore, the New York Times Foundation and the British Broadcasting Corporation. She received the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Council in 2003, the highest arts award given to an artist under-35. "Mammon Inc" won the 2004 Singapore Literature Prize.
