Well-crafted and without superfluous details, her books address important issues but not without a touch of humour.
One might think that she has been writing her whole life, but Kow only stumbled upon her writing career later in life, with her first short story collection, “Ripples and Other Stories”, published when she was 40.
The book, which is out of print, also made the shortlist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award in 2009.
“It all started when I attended the Silverfish Writing Programme; it sparked my love for writing,” she said, adding that she “fell into writing, rather than really going after it”.
As a child, she recalled enjoying writing for her school’s newsletters. “When we are young, we do things quite innocently, without thinking of leveraging it as a career,” said the 53-year-old with a background in chemical engineering.
“I guess I’m going back to what I enjoyed doing as a kid,” she said.
The avid reader said she was also grateful for the well-stocked library in her secondary boarding school in Kulim.
“I was very lucky; there were books by Orwell, Isaac Asimov and John le Carre, among others. It was very easy to get sucked into reading because the material was good,” she said, adding that some of her favourite writers included Kazuo Ishiguro, Annie Proulx, V S Naipaul and Ted Chiang.
Kow’s second book, “The Sum of Our Follies”, was released in 2014, and features a delightful cornucopia of characters set in the fictional town of Lubok Sayong, which is a character in its own right.
“Some of the segments were short stories, and I needed to bring them all together – that’s where Lubok Sayong came in,” she explained.
The book has been translated into French and Italian, in addition to a German edition that will be published soon.
The French edition won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger in 2018, a prestigious literary award.
Apart from that, Kow also has many other short stories that are published in various anthologies and online journals.
Over the last few years, Kow hasn’t had the opportunity to write as much as she’d like due to the demands of her job, but after retiring last year, she has more control over her time.
“At the moment, I’m submitting short stories to online journals,” she says, adding that it’s extremely gratifying to see her work in print, be it in a small or more established journal.
“I also read those journals, and this has exposed me to all kinds of stories that I wouldn’t normally read.”
Writing process
Although Kow has picked up some useful writing rules along the way, she mainly writes without conforming to any particular writing convention.
“No one told me I had to have a three-act structure, or that the climax had to happen around the 75% mark of the story in order to have the greatest impact,” she explained, adding that she wanted the writing process to be fairly joyful.
Kow usually begins with a vague idea of a story line and a character. “I don’t plot a lot; the early draft is written rather freely. During editing however, I am more critical.
“Sometimes, the point-of-view might change and I’ll rewrite the whole thing; there’s no actual formula.”
Kow advised aspiring writers against obsessing over rejections and constantly find avenues for publication.
“Send it out once you feel you’ve reached a point where it’s as good as you can make it,” she said, explaining that this very process forced one to self-evaluate.
“There’s value in that – it’ll make you want to write better, regardless of where you’re currently at. Then, just inch forward; that’s all we can do, as practitioners of a craft.”
Follow Shih-Li Kow on Twitter and purchase ‘The Sum of Our Follies’ at Silverfish Books. You can also read her short stories in the MudSeason Review and Short Fiction Journal.