Rosalind Chua
Rosalind Chua is a publishing professional with 25 years of industry experience. Over the course of her career, she has worked in various departments—from foreign rights, production and editorial—in both the UK (Amber Books and Transworld Publishers) and Malaysia.
Since returning home in 2003, she has been an advocate for Malaysian literary talent; her goal is to promote Malaysian writing on the world stage through SCLA. This is reflected in her authors who have gone on to receive international acclaim: Viji Krishnamoorthy (longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award) and Gabija Grušaitė (shortlisted for the 2019 EU Prize for Literature among others).
In terms of submissions, she’s interested in contemporary urban writing, historical fiction and speculative fiction with distinct Malaysian and South East Asian flavours. She particularly loves the works of Hilary Mantel, Haruki Murakami and Donna Tartt.
Rosalind is also the founder of Clarity Publishing, one of Malaysia’s best small presses with a focus on commercial non-fiction and upmarket fiction.
SOCIAL MEDIA
“Although fiction has always been a passion, I always told myself that I’d stay clear of publishing English-language fiction in Malaysia. The market is incredibly tough with all the UK/US imports flooding in and it can be daunting introducing new Malaysian writers to local readers who are often more fixated with the NY Times/Sunday Times bestseller lists. Having said that, I do enjoy a challenge! I just love it when readers write in to say how blown away they were by the writing, that our books were just as good if not better than the imports.
This made me realise that Malaysian authors deserve a much larger audience, our home market is too small but at the same time I can’t publish all the excellent fiction that comes my way! SCLA is our new baby and one we want to bring Malaysian talent to the world.
I think this will be a brilliant time for SCLA with all the discussions on diversity and inclusion (or lack of!) in publishing taking place. People are having more conversations about representation in books and it’s high time. We definitely need these conversations and we need more agents, editors and publishers to realise that there is a much bigger, more colourful world out there to offer readers if we can move beyond entrenched mindsets and the comfort zone.”