In August 2020, I sat down for a phone interview with Kim Villagante, a.k.a. Kimmortal the Artist to record their an episode for their podcast, FACES. Kim is a musician, actor, rapper, and community builder. FACES is a deep [...]

In September 2020, Saltwater Spirits became available for library loans in Singapore. Thank you to all my readers in Singapore who requested the National Library Board (NLB) to carry Saltwater Spirits in the catalog. Putting in a request to [...]

On July 18, 2020, I joined 25 other authors at INFUSION-YA Book Festival in an exciting day-long virtual literary festival. INFUSION-YA Book Festival is a book festival dedicated to lovers of young adult literature. As a new author with a [...]

Dear Saltwater Spirits, Who would have thought writing you would have taken us both this far? We've been invited to multiple readings, been asked to moderate at a conference, and next month, we will be attending our first literary festival [...]

My novel, Saltwater Spirits and Sastra tote from Studio Gypsied (photo credit: Aqilah Zailan) In December 2019, I sat down for an interview with Aqilah Zailan of Studio Gypsied, a conscious fashion label from Singapore. I was [...]

On the morning of Saturday, September 28, I walked into my old alma mater at the University of British Columbia.  The Robert. H Lee Alumni Center is a beautiful space and Stratagem 2019 — a 2.5-day summit focused on elevating [...]

On the night of August 14, 2019, I performed at a fundraiser for Loujain Al-Hathloul. It was the biggest audience I've performed in front to date. There were about 100 people in a space that showed up to support [...]

It’s been two months since the official launch of Saltwater Spirits. Since then, I’ve been trying to juggle work, parenting, and life. Throughout it all, I have continued writing and boy, has it been a real doozy. Some people have [...]

The launch of Saltwater Spirits was a huge success. I performed several excerpts from my debut novel to a full house and there was a lively Q&A period followed by author signing and mingling. Thank you to Patricia Massy [...]

On May 24, 2019, I had the honor of being invited to perform for the Real Vancouver Writers' Series. I was part of a lineup of six writers from Vancouver and Toronto. I was invited as an emerging writer, [...]

The setting for Saltwater Spirits, while inspired by midcentury Nusantara, is ambiguous. This means I do not clearly situate a specific time or place for the story. In this blog post, I will reflect on why I intentionally wrote it [...]

In Saltwater Spirits, we follow a spirited young woman named Norma. The name functioned as a placeholder name while I worked on the manuscript for three years. It is the name of my Nenek, my maternal grandmother. As time [...]

She appeared to me out of nowhere. I don't remember the exact circumstances - I might have been on a bus, or it might have been a dream. All I know is she popped into my head and didn't [...]

The inspiration behind the cover for Saltwater Spirits was to illustrate the story inside it — crossover fiction inspired by midcentury P. Ramlee Malay movies, mystery novels, and stories about the supernatural I heard growing up as a kid [...]

Hello there. Allow me welcome you to my little corner of the Internet. My name is Syahidah, and I’m a writer and author. I’ve always been a writer. As a child, I would write in my journal about [...]