Board of Directors

Chair 2008/09 - Xu Xi

Vice Chairs 2009 - Rukmini Bhaya Nair & Dinah Roma-Sianturi

Founder & Director - Jane Camens

	Thanet Aphornsuvan is Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand.
	Brian Castro is Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide. He the author of nine novels and a volume of essays.
	Jane Camens is the founder of the Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership and co-founded the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. She is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, Australia
	Catherine Cole is a writer and Professor of Creative Writing at RMIT, Melbourne. She is involved in a range of research projects on writers and writing including Australia’s cultural relationship with Vietnam which examines contemporary Vietnamese writing.
	Jon Cook holds the Chair of Literature, is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and is the Director of the Centre for Creative and Performing Arts the University of East Anglia in the UK. He is also a member of the Arts Council of England and Symposium Director of Writing Worlds, an initiative of the Writing Centre Norwich, bringing together leading international writers.
	Robin Hemley is a writer and Director of Creative Nonfiction at the University of Iowa. He also teaches at Vermont College of Fine Art and is partner in Authors at Large.
	Nicholas Jose currently holds the Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Western Sydney and is Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University for 2009.
	Christopher Merrill is the Director of the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa. He is the author of many books of poetry, nonfiction, and translations, including Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars.
	Rukmini Bhaya Nair is professor of Linguistics and English at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
	Satendra Nandan is Foundation Professor and Dean, School of Humanities and Arts, University of Fiji. He is also Foundation Director, Gandhi-Tappoo Centre for Writing, Ethics and Peace Studies.
	Dinah Roma-Sianturi is the director of De La Salle University’s Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center (Manila).
	Kirpal Singh is Associate Professor of English Literature & Creative Thinking at Singapore Management University. He has authored or edited 16 books.
	Nury Vittachi is an author and literary activist. As a writer, he is best known for his comic novel series The Feng Shui Detective. He co-founded with Jane Camens the Hong Kong International Literary Festival and initiated the Man Asia Literary Prize. He teaches storytelling technics at Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University.
	Xu Xi is a writer who inhabits the flight path connecting Hong Kong, New York and the South Island of New Zealand. She is faculty chair at Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing and, as of March 2010, she will be writer-in-residence at City University of Hong Kong’s Department of English, overseeing a new low-residency MFA specializing in Asian writing in English.

Advisory Council

Advisory Council members have the right of audience and debate at the Board’s AGM. Advisory Council members create working subcommittees and propose to the Board joint activities with the Partnership, such as workshops, conferences, collaborative research, co-hosted literary events, translation projects.

• Adam Aitken is the author of three major collections of poetry and a scholar/practitioner of Asian-Australian literature. He lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Technology, Sydney.
• Harry Aveling is currently Extra Ordinary Professor of Translation Studies in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia. He has translated extensively from Indonesian and Malay for over three decades.
• Kunal Basu is a writer whose novels include The Opium Clerk, The Miniaturist, and Racists, and a collection of short stories, The Japanese Wife, the lead story of which is being made into a film by Indian director Aparna Sen.  He teaches at Oxford University.
• Alison Broinowski, formerly an Australian diplomat, has written extensively about the interface between Australia and Asia. She is co-leader of a research team on Australian-Asian fiction at the University of Wollongong.
• Martha P.Y. Cheung is Chair Professor in Translation, Head of the Translation Programme (BA Hons), and Director of the Centre for Translation at Hong Kong Baptist University. She is also Associate Vice-President of Hong Kong Baptist University.
• Isagani R. Cruz is a Filipino playwright, critic, biographer, short story writer, and columnist. His plays, essays, and short stories in Filipino and English have won numerous awards, including the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards in Literature Hall of Fame and the SEAWRITE.
• Jose Dalisay teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines, where is has also served as chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature and Vice President for Public Affairs.
• Jill Dawson has written six acclaimed novels and edited six other books. She is a member of the Board of the New Writing Partnership in Britain.
• Robert Dixon is Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney.
• Debjani Ganguly is Head of the Humanities Research Centre at The Australian National University. Her areas of specialization are postcolonial literary and historical studies and comparative/world literatures in the era of globalization.
• Howard Goldblatt has been acclaimed by some as the most important translator of modern and contemporary Chinese literature.
• Kaiser Haq is a poet, essayist, translator and Professor of English at Dhaka University.
• Ivor Indyk is the founding editor of the Australian international literary magazine HEAT and publisher of the Giramondo book imprint, housed within the Writing and Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney. Giramondo’s lists include a large number of books by Asian-Australian writers. Professor Indyk supervises postgraduate research in Australian literature and literary publishing.
• Ponglada K. Ittimakin (“Panwadee”) is a novelist, writer, columnist, translator, editor, publisher, Director of the Writers’ Association of Thailand, and a member of a sub-committee dealing with copyright in Thailand.
• berni m janssen is a writer/performer and convenor of the Asia and Pacific Writers Network. She is also a committee member of Melbourne PEN.
• Leung Ping-Kwan is a poet and novelist. He teaches literature and film at Lingnan University and has published critical works on Hong Kong culture and cinema.
• Eddin Khoo is a poet, writer, journalist and translator. He is Founder and Director of the cultural organisation Pusaka and Principal Editor of Kala – a publishing house in Malaysia dedicated to literary translation.
• Tseen Khoo is the Convenor of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network, and a Monash University Research Fellow. She has published on Asian Australian and Asian Canadian literature, as well as representations of Australian cultural community heritage.
• Christopher (‘Kit’) Kelen is an Associate Professor at the University of Macau where he teaches Literature and Creative Writing.
• Malashri Lal is Professor in the Department of English, University of Delhi, India. She has authored two books and edited eight books in the area of Women’s Writing, and has served on the international jury of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, London.
• Jacqueline Lo is Reader in English and Heads the School of Humanities at the Australian National University. Jacquie is Chair of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network.
• Chandani Lokuge is the Founder Director of the Centre for Postcolonial Writing, Coordinator of the Creative Writing programme, and a Senior Lecturer in English at Monash University. She is the author of nine books, including two novels and a book of short fiction.
• Philip Mead holds the new Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Western Australia.
• Stephen Muecke is a writer and Professor of Writing at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
• Wenche Ommundsen is Professor of English and Associate Dean for Research at the University of Wollongong. She has published widely on multicultural writing, and particularly on writers from Asian diasporas. She is currently co-ordinating an ARC-funded project entitled ‘Globalising Australian literature: Asian-Australian  writing, Asian perspectives on Australian literature.’
• Laksmi Pamuntjak is a poet, fiction writer, translator, essayist and a publisher and co-founder of Aksara Bookstore in Jakarta.
• Alvin Pang is a Singaporean poet and editor, whose works include Testing the Silence, City of Rain, and several anthologies and websites. His latest project is an anthology of poems from Singapore and Australia, in collaboration with John Kinsella.
• Bruce Pascoe is a writer and publisher who produced the quarterly Australian Short Stories for 16 years. He has published over 20 novels, histories, children’s books and indigenous language dictionaries. He lives at Gipsy Point and is of Bunurong heritage.
• Chusak Pattarakulvanit is an associate professor and Head of English Language and Literature Department, Thammasat University, Bangkok.
• Alexandra Pearson has been living and working in Beijing since 1992. In 2003 she established The Bookworm Group, a bookshop/library/café/event space, which she now runs in three cities in China – Beijing, Chengdu and Suzhou.
• Mohit Prasad teaches Pacific Literature, Diaspora and Postcolonial Studies at the University of the South Pacific (USP) in Fiji. He is the Director of the Pacific Writing Forum and Divisional Head of Literature.
• Mr R. Ramachandran is Executive Director of the National Book Development Council of Singapore.
• Julianne Schultz is the founding editor of Griffith REVIEW, an Australian quarterly of ideas and fine writing, and a professor at Griffith University’s Centre for Public Culture and Ideas.
• Ketut Seken is currently a Vice Rector at Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha in Bali.
• Ravi Shankar is Associate Professor at Central Connecticut State University.
• Bernabe (‘Abe’) Barreto Soares is a poet from East Timor and works as an interpreter/ translator for the UN Peacekeeping Mission, UNMIT.
• Keshab Sigdel is an Executive Committee Member of Literary Association of Nepal, a professional organization of university teachers. Additionally, he is the secretary of Society of Nepali Writing in English (N/WEN) and one of the editors of Of Nepalese Clay, a biannual literary publication of N/WEN. He is also National Vice President and Regional Action Network Coordinator of Amnesty International, Nepal. Samaya Bighatan, his first collection of poems, was published in 2008.
• Sitok Srengenge is a poet, writer, translator and editor. He is also Director of the Utan Kayu International Literary Biennale, Indonesia.
• Regis Stella is Associate Professor of Literature and English at the University of Papua New Guinea and also the Head of the Literature and English Communication Department. His area of specialisation is in Postcolonial Studies and Creative Writing. He is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction.  He holds a PhD in English from the University of New South Wales and an Honorary Fellowship in Writing from Iowa.
• Frank Stewart is a writer, translator, editor, and educator. He is a professor of English at the University of Hawaii, president of The Manoa Foundation, and editor of Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, published since 1989 by the University of Hawai’i Press.
• David Whish-Wilson is a novelist who teaches creative writing, currently returning from lecturing at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji, to teach at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies, Curtin University, Western Australia.
• Ouyang Yu is a poet, novelist, literary translator and critic. He has published 44 books in English and Chinese and is now based in Melbourne.