Past, Present, And Future: An Interview with Malaysian Writer Chua Kok Yee

Zainor Izat Zainal; Azalea Ahmad Kushairi

doi:10.22452/

Authors

Zainor Izat Zainal Universiti Putra Malaysia
Azalea Ahmad Kushairi Universiti Putra Malaysia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22452/

Keywords:

Chua Kok Yee

Abstract

The career of Malaysian author and artist Chua Kok Yee has evolved from the corporate finance sector into literature, academia, and visual storytelling. He trained in accounting at the University of Malaya and spent more than 25 years in the corporate world. Chua began writing around 20 years ago while building his corporate career. He made his literary debut in 2007 by co-authoring News From Home alongside Shih-Li Kow and Rumaizah Abu Bakar. In 2010, he published his own highly praised collection of short stories, Without Anchovies. His writing achieved significant national impact when three stories from this collection were selected as required reading for the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (Malaysian Certificate of Education) English Literature syllabus. He continued to build his literary portfolio by contributing to anthologies such as Best Of Malaysian Short Fiction in English 2010-2020 (2022), Ronggeng-Ronggeng- Malaysia Short Stories (2019), Remang (2017), Little Basket: New Malaysian Writing (2016), KL Noir Blue (2014), Black and White and Other New Short Stories from Malaysia (2012) and winning the second Fixi Novo Malaysian Novel contest in 2022 for his debut novel Not A Monster and publishing another short story collection, The Muse and Other Stories, with Penguin Random House SEA in 2023. Chua's success in writing led to an academic appointment as an Adjunct Professor at the Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2024. Blending his writing and artistic talents, he released his debut graphic novel, Bleeding Scars: The Calamity of Canning in 2025, a horror story based on an Ipoh urban legend. We conducted an interview with Chua Kok Yee on 27 March 2026, to elucidate his perspective on the chronology of his literary expression, from its formative past to its current manifestations and future potentialities.

Author Biographies

Zainor Izat Zainal, Universiti Putra Malaysia

Zainor Izat Zainal is senior lecturer at Universiti Putra Malaysia, where she teaches Malaysian literature in English, creative writing and miscellaneous other subjects related to world literature. Currently, she is Vice President of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment ASEAN (ASLE-ASEAN) and Co-Chief Editor of Journal of Southeast Asian Ecocriticism. Her research interests include postcolonial ecocriticism and teaching literature in the Malaysian ESL context. She has been actively involved in producing student play productions in Universiti Putra Malaysia such as Atomic Jaya (2017), Toast! (2019) and The Girl and The Ghost (2023), and When The Sun Sits On The Branches Of That Jambu Tree (2024).
Azalea Ahmad Kushairi, Universiti Putra Malaysia

Azalea Ahmad Kushairi is a teaching fellow at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) specialising in comparative literature, particularly the studies of folklore and the fantastic. Her research explores the intersection of material ecocriticism and psychoanalytic frameworks to uncover the complex relationships between cultural narratives, nature, and the psyche. Engaging with these interdisciplinary approaches, she examines how folklore reveals deeper ecological and psychological truths. Her broader research interests include the comparative study of storytelling traditions across cultures and the role of material cultures in shaping collective consciousness. Drawing on an anthropological perspective, her work aims to deepen the understanding of how cultural artifacts and narratives interact with human experience, identity, and the environment.