Sumitra Singam is a Malaysian-Indian-Australian coconut who writes in Naarm/Melbourne. She travelled through many spaces, both beautiful and traumatic to get there and writes to make sense of her experiences. Her work has been published widely, nominated for a number of Best Of anthologies, and was selected for Best Microfictions 2024. She works as a psychiatrist and trauma therapist and runs workshops on how to write trauma safely, and the Yeah Nah reading series. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). You can find her and her other publication credits on Bluesky: @pleomorphic2 & sumitrasingam.squarespace.com
Sumitra’s collaborative hybrid chapbook “Are You Willing?” with Amy Marques is available from Bottlecap Press
Sumitra’s free trauma-informed writing workshop will go live on March 17 at 5pm EST, via the amazing Writer’s Workout - a free, virtual conference hosted on YouTube (https://www.writersworkout.net/).
If you aren’t familiar with her work, here’s one of her pieces to start things off:
My Grandmother Paati Says She Will Show These Vellaikaarans How To Do Colonisation Properly, Isn’t It? (Sumitra Singam | The Welkin Writing Prize)
Why I like it (MK): the voice in this piece is stunning. I love how the “Isn’t It?” in the title does so much to anchor that. Then, within the space of just one hundred words, we have a whole life on a postage stamp - a sense of past, present, future - all brought to life with such clear, specific details.
(SS) For this month’s Mondettes, I have chosen ten stories by writers from the Global Majority (thanks to the amazing work of Rosemary Campbell Stephens who came up with this term).
The Flight of Swallows (Sher Ting | Flash Flood, 2022)
Why I like it (SS): I love that this amazingly crafted piece is Sher’s debut flash. I love the specificity of the details she has chosen to bring this deeply intimate story to life, even in the emotional distance she shows us, and the inclusion of Mandarin characters.
Beloved, There Is A Song Where The Ocean Meets The Sky (Tom Okafor | Flash Flood, 2023)
Why I like it: I love the way the poetry in this piece gracefully makes way for the plot, and how that is given to us so tenderly and carefully.
Interlude (Jun Ying Wen | Empty House Press)
Why I like it: There is so much unsaid, or merely hinted at, in this tiny piece, and yet, through the startling imagery (“the cornfield of their mouths”), we get such a vivid and evocative picture.
PROMPT: Tell a story about a quiet afternoon with a friend.
Sweeter Than Sugar (Laila Amado | Boudin, The McNeese Review)
Why I like it: A twist ending is so hard to do well, but this feels so natural and so earned. I love the specific details in the opening, and how this ties back to the present.
Funnel Cloud Baby (Andy Lopez | Flash Frog)
Why I like it: This piece uses the weather to give us a much deeper story, and the more you read, the more layers of this story become revealed. It feels deep and endless, particularly hard in this word count.
Tell the Bees (Varsha Venkatesh | Exposition Review)
Why I like it: I love this completely unique take on this theme. I love the hope and joy inherent in the request the narrator makes, even if the characters’ style of relationship hasn’t allowed for that before.
What Happened Was (Christina Cooke | Split Lip)
Why I like it: A great title can truly elevate a story, add another layer to it. We are set up to think we are going to be given a direct narration of “what happened”, and the writer cleverly sets out subverting this.
PROMPT: Write a story which does the opposite of its title.
The World According to My Grandmother (Pegah Ouji | Asian American Writers’ Workshop)
Why I like it: This piece seems like four separate vignettes, but Pegah has used such clever imagery and themes to link them so that we get a fuller picture as we read.
Grief Is a K-Drama Playing on the TV in Another Room (Sylvia Santiago | HAD)
Why I like it: I love the clever way Sylvia has shown us how overwhelming emotion can be ungraspable, like a foreign language.
Dreams of the Fallen Angelic Youth (Shiwei Zhou | Hex Literary)
Why I like it: This story makes the absurd and surreal so mundane that you have no choice but to connect with the deep humanity in it.
PROMPT: Write about someone relating their, or others’ dreams
What did you think of these choices? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments - have you found a new favourite piece? Did you try out one of the prompts?
Next month’s selection will be chosen by Barbara Diggs and will be appearing (fingers crossed) on the 15th April.
Opportunities to work with Matt
Lyrical Writing
How do we craft writing so infused with musicality that it deserves to be read out loud? How do we get a reader to speed up or slow down? How do we sustain rhythm and flow from one sentence to the next? This flash fiction course explores various tricks and techniques which can be used to lend a lyrical quality to our prose.
9th - 22nd June 2025
Tempo | Rhythm | Sound | Motifs
Online, fully asynchronous course and workshop
Pay-what-you-can pricing. £105 recommended
Editing
NOVEL / NOVELLA EDITING: First steps review / structural review / line edit / submission review
EDITING FOR COLLECTIONS: Structural overview report / line edit
SHORT FICTION EDITING: Structural review / line edit / detailed edit
Wonderful choices all! I enjoyed the selection immensely. Thank you!!
A lot of new to me stories! Thank you for these stunners.