Jonathan Chan is a writer, editor, and translator of poems and essays. His first collection of poems, going home (Landmark, 2022), was a finalist for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2024. His second collection is bright sorrow (Landmark, 2025).

 

He serves as Managing Editor of the poetry archive poetry.sg, Poetry, Creative Non-Fiction, & Essays Editor at the Journal of Practice, Research & Tangential Activities (PR&TA), and Reading Board Member at The Plentitudes. He also serves on the English Subcommittee of Poetry Festival Singapore, where he was an Editor-in-Chief for the Singapore Literature Conference Monograph 2021 and 2023: Selected Proceedings. 

 

His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Robert Siegel Prize, and the Hawker Prize for Southeast Asian Poetry, shortlisted for The Cambridge University Poetry & Prose Prize, longlisted for Palette Poetry’s Previously Published Poem Prize, and awarded The Grantchester Award by The Orchards. He has read poems at the Singapore Writers Festival, Poesiefestival Berlin, George Town Literary Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival, the Wheeler Centre, and the Cambridge Faculty of Divinity. 

 

Educated at Cambridge and Yale, he was born in New York to a Malaysian father and South Korean mother. He was raised in Singapore, where he currently lives and works. More of his writing can be found at jonbcy.wordpress.com.