Shaz Johar

Shaz Johar is an author, editor and translator. His fiction explores social anxieties in contemporary Malaysia, including identity issues; manipulation and dogmatic discourse; and interracial, interreligious and intergenerational relationships.

His first novel, Kougar, won the 2011 Selangor Young Talent Award for fiction. Since then, he has published the novels Tabu (2011), Mental (2012), Sanctuaria (2014), the “Nota” trilogy (2015, 2016, 2017), Salafi (2018), Aku (2019), Sumpah (2020), and Kougar 2 (2021). His short fiction in Malay has appeared in numerous anthologies as well as in the collection Cerpen: Shaz Johar (2013). In English, he has published short fiction in the KL Noir: Red anthology and in the Anak Sastra literary journal. Elsewhere, Shaz has coauthored several novellas in English under a pseudonym.

Shaz became a certified translator with Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in 2014 and has translated several novels into Malay by authors ranging from Salla Simukka to John Green. He has worked as an editor since 2015, where he is responsible for foreign rights acquisition and general copyediting.