Presenting the cover and contents for LONTAR issue #5!

This issue of LONTAR presents speculative writing from and about Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand.

Inside these pages, you’ll find:

• an ancient and fatal karmic reunion in Jakarta by award-winner Gord Sellar;
• the true origin of the Merlion by Singapore Literature Prize winner Amanda Lee Koe;
• a young man’s literal transformation into an island by award-winner Ng Yi-Sheng;
• a far-future Malaysian fairy tale by Kawika Guillermo;
• a gentle aquatic apocalypse from novelist Erica Verrillo;
• an enlightening visit with a forest monk in northern Thailand by Italian journalist Massimo Morello;
• a comic on the price of technological hubris by Benjamin Chee;
• and speculative poetry by Tania De Rozario, Joel Donato Jacob, Lee Jing-Jing, Daryl WJ Lim, Christina Sng and Sokunthary Svay.

We’re sending the issue to the printer in a couple of weeks, so it should be available in mid-October in bookstores all over Singapore, on the Epigram Books website, and as an ebook through Weightless Books. We’ll be launching L5 along with L4 at the 2015 Singapore Writers Festival in November, and many contributors from both issues will be on hand to discuss their writing and sign copies.