In 2012, author and editor Jason Erik Lundberg released Fish Eats Lion, the first anthology of literary speculative fiction to be published in Singapore, and opened the floodgates of acceptability for the genre in the island-nation, forever changing the landscape. Now, a decade later, he returns with Fish Eats Lion Redux, proving that SF is still alive and strong in the Lion City.
With original stories by Meihan Boey, Ng Yi-Sheng, Nuraliah Norasid, Victor Fernando R. Ocampo, Suffian Hakim, Inez Tan, Cyril Wong, Daryl Qilin Yam and many more, this new collection shows beyond doubt that the realm of the imagination has never been so strange or so local.
Jason Erik Lundberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and has lived in Singapore since 2007. His latest publications are the novel A Fickle and Restless Weapon (2020), the related novella Diary of One Who Disappeared (2019, recipient of a Creation Grant from the National Arts Council of Singapore), and the "greatest hits" short fiction collection Most Excellent and Lamentable: Selected Stories (2019).
He is also the author of many other books for adults—including Red Dot Irreal (2011), The Alchemy of Happiness (2012), Strange Mammals (2013), and Embracing the Strange (2013); books for children—the bestselling six-book Bo Bo and Cha Cha picture book series (2012–2015) and Carol the Coral (2016); and more than a hundred short stories, articles, and book reviews. His writing has been translated into half a dozen languages, and seen publication in venues such as Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, the Raleigh News & Observer, Farrago’s Wainscot, Hot Metal Bridge, Strange Horizons, Subterranean Magazine, The Third Alternative, Electric Velocipede, and many other places. His work has won the POPULAR Readers’ Choice Award, has been shortlisted for the SLF Fountain Award, Brenda L. Smart Award for Short Fiction and SCBWI Crystal Kite Member Choice Award, and was honourably mentioned twice in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
For nearly twelve years, Lundberg was the fiction editor at Epigram Books, where he jump-started the Singaporean publisher's fiction line; many of the over 90 titles he edited there won multiple national awards, and made various year’s best lists. His authors include Boey Kim Cheng, Meihan Boey, Balli Kaur Jaswal, Amanda Lee Koe, Ng Yi-Sheng, Nuraliah Norasid, O Thiam Chin, Jeremy Tiang, Cyril Wong and Daryl Qilin Yam.
In addition, he is the founding editor of LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction (2012–2018), series editor for the award-winning biennial Best New Singaporean Short Stories anthology series (est. 2013), editor of Fish Eats Lion Redux (2022) and Fish Eats Lion (2012), and co-editor of A Field Guide to Surreal Botany (2008) and Scattered, Covered, Smothered (2004). From 2005–2008, he facilitated an occasional podcast called Lies and Little Deaths: A Virtual Anthology.
An active member in PEN America and a 2002 graduate of the prestigious Clarion Writers Workshop, Lundberg holds a Master's degree in creative writing from North Carolina State University. Furthermore, he was a 2025 Visiting Writer at the Asia Creative Writing Programme, and a 2023 International Writer-in-Residence at the Toji Cultural Foundation Residency Program in South Korea. He has served as a prose mentor with the Creative Arts Programme and Ceriph Mentorship Programme, and he currently lectures on contemporary publishing, editorial theory & practice, and creative writing at Nanyang Technological University.
loved this collection of speculative fiction! it’s so rare that i get to read speculative fiction written in a local context 💘 here’s a special mention of my favourites: longkang at the end of the world blue wife, skin, keeper, slick 315 the dog frontier