Claire Tham Li Mei (b. 1967- , Singapore) is the author of several award-winning short story collections and a full length novel, Skimming. She contributes occasional literary reviews to The Straits Times as well. Previously working at DBS Bank Ltd as a legal officer, Tham is currently partner at a local law firm, Hin Tat Augustine & Partners.
Early Life
Early Life
Tham's writing career started at the age of 17, when she entered and won two prizes in the National Short Story Competition. Other than Tham's educational history, as well as her participation and subsequent wins in this short story competition, not much is recorded of her childhood and early years. Tham graduated with a degree in law from Oxford University after her secondary and tertiary education at the Convent of Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) and Hwa Chong Junior College. She continues to write and has since published three short story collections and a novel.
Publications and Achievements
Tham's writing career first began in 1984, where she placed second for two different prizes in the National Short Story Writing Competition of that year. Just six years later, she was awarded the Commendation Award for Fiction by the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) for her first short story collection, Fascist Rock: Stories of Rebellion (1990), in 1992. Lee, one of her short stories from the aforementioned short story collection, has been adapted for the television screen as Episode Two of Alter Asians on MediaCorp TV12's Arts Central channel in 2000. It has also been included in Ties that Bind (2007), a compilation of Singaporean short stories published by the National Library Board. A few years after the publication of her first short story collection, Tham followed up with another award-winning collection, Saving the Rainforest and Other Stories (1993). Her second short story collection won her the Highly Commended Award from NBDCS in 1995.
The writer's more recent short stories have found similar success in the annual Short Story Writing Competition that is jointly organised by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and the National Arts Council (NAC). She received the Golden Point Award for two of her short stories, The Gun Powder Trail and Driving Sideways in the SPH-NAC Short Story Writing Competitions of 1999 and 2001 respectively. Both short stories are included in her third short story collection, The Gunpowder Trail and Other Stories (2003).
In an interview in 1999, Tham admitted that she takes quite a while to come up with original work because of her tendency to rework what she has already written, sometimes even choosing to discard entire stories when they do not work out.
The New Straits Times noted in a review of Skimming that, unlike several other Singaporean writers, Tham's emphasis is on characterisation rather than the physical location and setting of her stories. Her characters frequently stray away from the mainstream society and its conventions as they push against the boundaries of social norms, even while recognising the comforts of conforming to these conventions.
In Fascist Rock: Stories of Rebellion, Tham's spare, concise sentences and her sharp dialogue heighten the ennui of Singaporean youths, a group frustrated at the outdated and conformist practices in their society. There is a concerted effort at breaking away from the mould even for these rebels without a cause. Saving the Rainforest and Other Stories develops on these tensions between socially accepted behaviour and that of the need for individualism, an important concern in the creation of self-identities for both the characters and Singapore herself, as a young nation. The Gunpowder Trail and other Stories continues with Tham's themes of non-conformity and rebellion and it has been lauded for her technical innovation with style and form. The writer plays with the presentation of time and space in the progression of her narratives, creating multi-layered possibilites in her short fiction.
A departure from her short story collections, Tham's first novel, Skimming was published in 1999. It was originally intended as a short story and it just ran on because Tham felt that she could not reach a proper resolution within the usual length of a short story. The three protagonists in the novel take turns retelling the story in each of their own perspectives, thereby creating a more nuanced and complex treatment of the love triangle in the novel, an experience described as "being tight, claustrophobic but ultimately cathartic".
Awards
1984 : Second Place, National Short Story Writing Competition.
1992 : Commendation Award (Fiction) from NBDCS for Fascist Rock: Stories of Rebellion.
1995 : Highly Commended Award (Fiction) from NBDCS for Saving the Rainforest and Other Stories.
1999 : Golden Point Award in the SPH-NAC Short Story Writing Competition for her short story, The Gun Powder Trail.
2001 : Golden Point Award in the SPH-NAC Short Story Writing Competition for her short story, Driving Sideways.
Works
Short Story Collections
1990 : Fascist Rock: Stories of Rebellion
1993 : Saving the Rainforest and Other Stories
2003 : The Gun Powder Trail and Other Stories
Novel
1999 : Skimming
Author
Hong Xinying
References
Madell, John. (1994). Cover story on Claire Tham's Saving the rainforest (pp. 246-248). Skoob Pacifica anthology no. 2. The pen is mightier than the sword. London: Skoob Books.
(Call No.: RSING 809.8959 PEN)
Means, Laurell. (1994, Nov). The Role of the Writer in Today's Singapore: Voice of the Nation? (pp. 962-973) . Asian Survey, Vol. 34, No. 11. University of California Press. Retrieved from JSTOR July 1, 2009, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2645347.
Murphy, Neil. (2004, Jan). A Dark Contemporary Eye. Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Vol 3. No. 2 Jan 2004. Retrieved June 29, 2009, from http://www.qlrs.com/critique.asp?id=110.
National Book Development of Singapore. (2009). Claire Tham. Retrieved June 29, 2009, from http://www.bookcouncil.sg/_writers/writers_t.php.
Nazareth, Peter. (2004). Claire Tham. The Gunpowder Trail and Other Stories. World Literature Today. FindArticles.com. Retrieved June 29, 2009, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5270/is_3-4_78/ai_n29124398.
Ong, Sor Fern. (1999, Nov 25). Book 5 Spice. [Microfilm NL20355]. The Straits Times, Life!, p. 2.
Quayum, Mohammed A . (2000, 23 Aug). The love triangle reinvented. New Straits Times. Retrieved July 28, 2009, from http://global.factiva.com/en/arch/display.asp.
Singapore Committee on Culture & Information. (2009). Claire Tham. Retrieved June 29, 2009, from http://www.asean-coci.gov.sg/claire.html.
Tham, Claire. (1990). Fascist Rock: Stories of Rebellion. Singapore: Times Books International.
(Call No.: SING English THA)
Tham, Claire. (1993). Saving the Rainforest and other Stories. Singapore: Times Books International.
(Call No.: SING English THA)
Tham, Claire. (1999). Skimming. Singapore: Times Books International.
(Call No.: SING English THA)
Tham, Claire. (2003). The Gunpowder Trail and Other Stories. Singapore : Times Editions.
(Call No.: SING English THA)
The Law Society of Singapore (2007). Professional Notices As at 31 October 2007. The Law Society of Singapore. Retrieved July 27, 2009, from http://www.lawsociety.org.sg/shirin/profnotice.pdf .
Wicks, Peter. (2007, September 1). Claire Tham (1967-). The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved from USQ ePrints June 29, 2009, from http://eprints.usq.edu.au.
Wicks, Peter. (2003, August). Emergent Voices in Singaporean Fiction in English. Ethos Books. Retrieved from Ethos Books July 27, 2009, from http://www.ethosbooks.com.sg/store/writing_resources/articles/article_spore1_4.html .
Wicks, Peter. (2002). Singapore, Literature and Identity. In Quayum, Mohammad A. & Wicks, Peter. Ed., Singapore Literature in English: A Critical Reader (pp. 77-78). Malaysia : Universiti Putra Malaysia Press.
(Call No.: SING English 820.995957)
Yusof, Helmi. (1999, Dec 18). Knocking down sacred cows. "Review of Skimming by Claire Tham". [Microfilm NL20361]. The Straits Times, Life!, p. 19.
Further Reading
Television Adaptation
Lee, Thean-Jeen (Director, Writer). (2000). Lee [Television Episode]. In Ho, Sharon.(Producer), Alter Asians. Singapore: Mediacorp TV12.
The information in this article is valid as at 2009 and correct as far as we are able to ascertain from our sources. It is not intended to be an exhaustive or complete history of the subject. Please contact the Library for further reading materials on the topic.
Lee, Thean-Jeen (Director, Writer). (2000). Lee [Television Episode]. In Ho, Sharon.(Producer), Alter Asians. Singapore: Mediacorp TV12.
The information in this article is valid as at 2009 and correct as far as we are able to ascertain from our sources. It is not intended to be an exhaustive or complete history of the subject. Please contact the Library for further reading materials on the topic.
