Lydia Rahman

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The Lady

A Singapore Girl by blood, a writer by nature, and a wonderwoman by her own right.

Only 22 and still a National University of Singapore(NUS) Law schoolNUS Law undergraduate, Lydia Rahman has blazed trails in all the areas she excells in.

Notable pieces include "Who Will Stop Mad Garden Worship" in Straits Times Singapore Life interview, "Lipstick Makes Light of Affairs", the "Barnabas Lim letter", "Time For Us to Give Underdogs a Fighting Chance" and "A Special Homecoming This 9 August".

She tried to do the same in the Malay literary arena with her groundbreaking Pantun Temasek in 2005 but it never really broke through into the mainstream Malay society.

Possibly because Malays in Singapore don't read much, or possibly because she was the first ever 19-year-old in Malaya(Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei etc) to write and publish her own anthology of traditional malay poetry (the Pantun) so people might not have heard this brilliant young thing. It could also be, like Lydia Rahman herself agrees, the Pantun is such a dying tradition and virtually no efforts have been made by those in the position(like the media, schools etc) to preserve it.

Notable pieces in Berita Harian Singapore include "Apakah Orang Melayu Lebih Gemar Berhibur Sahaja?", "Vancouver Segar" and Pantun Temasek launch coverage.

Lydia Rahman is multilingual, and extremely effectively bilingual in her primary language, English, and her vernacular language, Malay. Thus she has written extensively in both languages and won awards for those writings; she has also capitalised on those talents to make her mark in the translation industry as well as in the workshops/training/tutoring circuits.

It is rumoured her next(English) book is coming up in late 2007.