ABOUT
Bio
Siang Lu is the author of Ghost Cities and The Whitewash, the co-creator of The Beige Index and the creator of #sillybookstagram.
The Whitewash won the ABIA Audiobook of the Year in 2023. Ghost Cities has been longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the ALS Gold Medal, and shortlisted for the Russell Prize for Humour Writing, the VPLA John Clarke Humour Award, the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize and the University of Queensland Fiction Book Award and The Courier-Mail People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year at the Queensland Literary Awards.
In 2023 Siang was named one of the Top 40 Under 40 Asian-Australians at the Asian Australian Leadership Awards.
He holds a Master of Letters from the University of Sydney and has written for film and television for Singapore's Beach House Pictures and Malaysia's Astro network.
He is based in Brisbane, Australia, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Siang has been forced to deny rumours that he is the secret author of Huxtable Heights, a #MeToo work of underground literature that mashes up Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and The Cosby Show, by replacing all of Heathcliff's original dialogue with lines uttered by Heathcliff Huxtable, aka Bill Cosby.
Unsure of how to pronounce 'Siang'?
Click below for an audio pronunciation, although wouldn't it be funny if you clicked this expecting a pronunciation guide and instead it was just some hectic techno MP3?
Silly Bookstagram
Siang's publisher forced him to set up an Instagram, but unwisely failed to specify what sort of content it should contain. So Siang thought, "Why waste time write book when Silly PhotoShop do trick?"
Thus was born #sillybookstagram, where Siang defaces books by his author friends.
For reasons that would take too long to explain, Siang is also Official BFFs with Kinokuniya Sydney, and is in a Situationship with Readings — Australia's largest independent bookstore — it's complicated, alright? Together with Dymocks George St and Better Read Than Dead in Sydney, they have formed part of a Taylor-like squad, where they do things like 💅👯♀️ and 🥂.