Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Shirley Geok-lin Lim is an award-winning Malaysian-born writer of poetry, fiction, and criticism. Her first collection of , ''Crossing The Peninsula'', published in 1980, won her the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, a first both for an and for a woman. Among several other awards that she has received, her memoir, ''Among the White Moon Faces'', received the 1997 American Book Award.

Born in Melaka, Malaysia into a life of poverty, deprivation, , and abandonment in a culture that, at that time, rarely recognised girls as individuals, Lim had a pretty unhappy childhood. Reading was a huge solace, retreat, and escape for her. Scorned by teachers for her love of over her "native" tongue, she was looked down upon for her pursuit of English literature. Her first was published in the ''Malacca Times'' when she was ten. By the age of eleven, she knew that she wanted to be a poet.

Lim had her early education at Infant Jesus Convent under the then education system. She won a federal scholarship to the University of Malaya, where she earned a B.A. first class honours degree in English at University of Malaya. In 1969, at the age of twenty-four, she entered graduate school at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts under a scholarship, and received a in English and in 1973.

Lim is a professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has also taught internationally at the National University of Singapore, the National Institute Education of Nanyang Technological University, and was the Chair Professor at the University of Hong Kong where she also taught poetry and creative writing. She has authored several books of poems, , and criticism, and serves as and co-editor of numerous scholarly works. Lim is a cross-genre writer, although she identifies herself as a poet. Her research interests include:
* 20th century American literature;
* Asian American cultural studies;
* and Southeast Asian literature;
* and writing and theory; and
* creative writing.

Lim has received numerous literary awards, among which are:
* "Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer Award" in 1996;
* American Book Award which she won twice, once with her co-edited anthology, ''The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Women's Anthology'' , and the second time, with her memoir, ''Among the White Moon Faces'' ; and
* Asiaweek Short Story award for "Mr. Tang's Uncles" .

An extract from "The Town Where Time Stands Still" by Shirley Geok-lin Lim has been included in the Journeys Stimulus Booklet as part of the compulsory course, studied by all students in their final year of secondary schooling in New South Wales, Australia.

Books and articles

* Memoir: "Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian American Memoir of Homelands"

* Fiction:
**" and Gold"
**''Sister Swing''

* Critical Books:
** "Nationalism and Literature: English-language Writing from the Philippines and Singapore"
** "Writing /East Asia in English"

* Books of Poetry and Short Stories:
** "Crossing the Peninsula and Other Poems"
** "Another Country"
** "Life's Mysteries"
** "No Man's Grove and Other Poems"
** "Modern Secrets: New and Selected Poems"
** "Monsoon History"
** "Two Dreams: New and Selected Stories"
** "What the Didn't Say"

* Some publications edited or co-edited:
** "The Forbidden Stitch"
** "Approaches to Teaching 's The Woman Warrior"
** "One World of Literature"
** "Transnational : Gender, Culture, and the Public Sphere"
** "Writing Out of Turn"
** "Before Its Time, Of Its Time: The Transnational Female Bildungsroman and Kartini's Letters of A nese Princess"
** "Asian American Literature: Leavening the Mosaic", in "Contemporary U. S. Literature: Multicultural Perspectives"
** "Power, Race, and Gender in : Strangers in the Tower?"
** "Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing"
** "English-Language Creative Writing in Hong Kong: Colonial Stereotype and Process," in Pedagogy 1
** "The Center Can Hold: U.S. Women's Studies and Global Feminism"
** "The Futures for Hong Kong English", co-authored with Kingsley Bolton
** "Transnational Americans: Asian Pacific American Literature of Anamnesia"
** "Global Asia as Post-Legitimation: A Response to Ambroise Kom's 'Knowledge and Legitimation'". Mots Pluriels.
** "Old Paradigms, New Differences: Comparative ", in Cultural Encounters
** "Complications of Feminist and Ethnic in Asian American Literature", in "Challenging Boundaries: Gender and Periodization"
** Foreword to "Asian American s: A Bio- Critical Sourcebook"
** "The Companion to the 20th Century American Short Story". David Wong Louie.