The New York‑based author, who won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2014 for her first short story collection, Ministry of Moral Panic, describes her early days as a writer and what her works reveal about herself. “When I’m working on a novel, I am prepared to have no human contact, eat the quickest and plainest meals, and sit down to write every day for 10 hours.” Since its release in 2019, the novel has garnered rave reviews from critics, including being named one of NPR's Favorite Books of 2019. Lee Koe reconstructed their lives in her fictional masterpiece, which took four years to write. “I was struck by the curious and banal fact that this was a photo taken before any of them became famous for the things they would soon go on to do,” says the Gen.T honouree. The women photographed were German-American actress Marlene Dietrich, her idol as a teenager Hollywood’s first Chinese-American movie star Anna May Wong and German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who was known for her Nazi propaganda films. Something about the three women in photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt's 1928 picture resonated with Lee Koe, inspiring her to turn the women into the leads of her story. In the What Matters To Me series, a Generation T honouree describes what they do, why they do it, and why it mattersĪ chance encounter with a monograph gave Amanda Lee Koe the idea for her debut novel, Delayed Rays of a Star.
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