JOSEPHINE CHIA, is a Peranakan who is proud of her heritage. She was born and raised in Kampong Potong Pasir in the 1950s.
Since then, she has picked up BA Honours from the University of Singapore and an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University College, United Kingdom.
Her short stories were first published in SINGA, the literary Journal of Singapore and also in The Straits Times. After moving to England in 1985, Josephine won the Ian. St. James Award and other prizes for both her short stories and articles; some of were published in various anthologies. She also received a highly commended prize from the Society of Women Writers & Journalists for her travel article.
An eclectic writer. Her fiction oeuvre includes two novels and a collection of short stories, while her non-fiction collection consists of a cook book and two others on yoga.
Josephine was a council member of UK’s Society of Women Writers & Journalists until she returned back to Singapore in May 2012. She taught creative writing, yoga and cookery in the UK.
Josephine currently runs creative writing workshops for the National Book Development Council Singapore, the National Library Board and is facilitator for Ministry of Education’s Creative Arts Program (CAP). She was also featured in NBDCS’s Youth’s Literary Festival and National Arts Council’s Words Go Round program for schools and in the Singapore Writers Festival.
For more information on Josephine, visit her website:
ISBN: 978-981-4276-84-9
Frog Under A Coconut Shell translates in Malay as ‘kakak bawah tempurong’, an idiom which likens someone to a frog that lives under a coconut shell, believing the shell to be its entire world.
It is a reference to both the author’s mother and the author herself. The author’s mother, although herself uneducated and living a parochial existence in a small village, believed and and fought hard to realise a greater vision – the right to educate her daughter. And the author had ot deal with the challenges of crossing boundaries both geographical and emotional. This moving tale weaves the lives of both women together, beautifully evoking the experience of living in 1960s Singapore, and painting in heartwarming detail, a Peranakan’s woman’s journey from the bloom of her youth to her later affliction with Alzheimer’s.