I am happy to announce that the contents of LONTAR issue #4 have been finalised! This fourth issue of LONTAR presents speculative writing from and about Singapore, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand. Inside these pages, you’ll find:

• the harsh realities of living as a refugee within a calorie-based economy by acclaimed award-winner Paolo Bacigalupi;
• the uneasy combination of domestic troubles and virtual reality from Palanca Prize winner Kate Osias;
• the unexpected and complete disappearance of Singapore itself from Singapore Literature Prize winner Ng Yi-Sheng;
• a surreal trip through alternate worlds from Philippines Free Press Literary Prize winner Eliza Victoria;
• an eerie meeting with chanteuse Faye Wong during a Malaysian holiday from Andrew Cheah;
• and speculative poetry from Michael Gray, Joses Ho, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, Cyril Wong and Jerrold Yam.

LONTAR is the world’s only biannual literary journal focusing on Southeast Asian speculative fiction. In this issue, seven contributors have won major literary awards in Singapore, USA, UK, Japan and the Philippines. The issue is scheduled for April 2015. Also, if you couldn’t guess from the description above, the novelette from Paolo Bacigalupi is “Yellow Card Man,” which was originally published in the December 2006 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, and was a finalist for the Hugo Award; the story serves as a prequel to his celebrated debut novel The Windup Girl, and has now been updated in this version so that it is consistent with the characters and events in the novel. Poetry Editor Kristine Ong Muslim and I are now reading for issue #5, to be released in Autumn 2015, so if you want your work to be considered, send it to us via the Submittable portal. If you’re still waiting for a reply on your submission, please be patient and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.