John Bengan has been appointed as the 2021-22 David T.K. Wong Writing Fellow at UEA. He is a writer and translator from the Philippines and received an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School in New York City. His works have appeared in Likhaan, Kritika Kultura, Cha, Anomaly, Words Without Borders, LIT, Shenandoah, and World Literature Today. During his time as the David T.K. Wong Fellow he plans to work on a crime novel that’s also an exploration of queerness in southern Philippines. The fellowship is worth £26,000 and lasts for a year. It is named for its sponsor, Mr David Wong, a retired Hong Kong businessman who has also been a teacher, journalist and senior civil servant, and is a writer of fiction. It enables a fiction writer who wants to write in English about the Far East to spend a year a UEA. Previous fellows include Wendy Law-Yone, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Balli Jaswal, Nam Le and Meng Jin.
