By Yeow Kai Chai

Zhang Ruihe's Small Droll Things is a bijou gem. Launched in September 2025 as part of the second series of the Paper Jam chapbooks, the poetry title is the eagerly-awaited solo print debut of Zhang – although you'd be forgiven for not knowing it.

That is because the author herself is an epitome of understatement, who often jokes that she lives under a rock. A long-time educator and writer's writer, she has quietly accrued a reputation for lyrical elegance and depth of thought, working slowly and away from the limelight across creative nonfiction, poetry, and short fiction. A perusal of her substantive contributions to QLRS – her essays are particularly luminous – proves hard work is integral to her artistry, hewn from observation and patience.

Zhang has received the Golden Point Award for English Poetry and a Pushcart nomination for the lyric essay "What I Hear is the Murmur" (Hinterland). Formerly Essays editor at QLRS from 2005 to 2009, she is also co-editor of In Transit: An Anthology from Singapore on Airports and Air Travel. She holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh.

1. What are you reading right now?
I'm slowly making my way through Cooked by Michael Pollan, in between various life-admin tasks that I've (also slowly) been trying to clear. It's a deliciously written and brilliantly structured book about how we cook the food we eat. Highly recommended!

2. If you were a famous literary character in a novel, play or poem, what would you be and why?
Gosh. I've never thought of myself in those terms. I can confess, though, that when I was in Secondary 3, a good friend told me that I reminded her of Jane Bennet from Pride & Prejudice. I was dismayed, because I thought Jane was super boring and anaemic, and because my favourite character was (of course) Elizabeth Bennet! I haven't re-read the novel since, and I barely remember it, so I cannot say what I'd think of those two characters now.

3. What is the greatest misconception about you?
A few years ago, a fellow writer (who shall remain unnamed) informed me that I had a secret hoard of poems stashed in some drawer or hard disk that I had so far refused to publish. Apparently, everybody knew about it except me.

4. Name one living writer and one dead writer you most identify with, and tell us why.
I've never fully "identified with" any other writer: how does one do that with lives so different from one's own?

But I can name a living writer whose spirit I admire: playwright Margaret Edson, whose one and only play W;t won the Pulitzer in 1999 and was adapted into a TV-movie starring Emma Thompson. She has not published anything since. In fact, her Wiki entry says that she's still teaching elementary school, "with no plans to write another play." That, to me, is the height of cool: say what you want to say, do it well, and then, if you have nothing more to add, let go and walk away.

As for a dead writer – Flannery O'Connor? Again, not because my life is anything like hers. But I like her way of seeing. And I kinda empathise with her "positionality" (I hate that word): she was always on the margins, both within her faith community and her literary community. Her approach to faith – as ontological reality, not simply cultural practice – left her an outlier not only in the secular literary world, but also among many of her fellow Catholics.

5. Do you believe in writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
That depends on how one defines 'writer's block.' I suppose one can always write something – the question is whether one is happy with it. I'm not sure if I've ever tried to "overcome" it – if I find myself staring at a blank screen, I just set it aside and go do something else. Life's too short; there are so many other things I need / want to do. There's a freedom in not having one's income depend on one's art that I'm grateful for.

6.  What qualities do you most admire in a writer?
Patience – the willingness to wait and work, not rushing into publication before the work is ready.

The willingness to try new things in one's art, rather than just staying safely within the confines of an artistic "formula" that has been proven to "work."  

7. What is one trait you most deplore in writing or writers?
Excessive ego / self-regard.

8. Can you recite your favourite line from a literary work or a piece of advice from a writer?
A piece of advice from T.S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday," wrapped in the form of a prayer: "Teach us to care and not to care. / Teach us to sit still."

9. Complete this sentence: Few people know this, but I...
… am a reverse banana. Although I think, write, and dream in English, and although I seem so "Western" in my "intellectual affiliations," my "soul" is actually very Chinese. I'm trying to brush up on my Chinese now – a belated attempt to get back in touch with my roots.

10. At the movies, if you have to pick a comedy, a tragedy or an action thriller to watch, which would you go for?
I've been craving a good comedy – but humour is such a slippery thing, and so hard to define. One man's humour is another woman's bad taste, because a shared sense of humour presumes shared values. I'm longing to watch something laugh-out-loud funny, smart but not smart-alecky. Recommendations, please?

11. What is your favourite word, and what is your least favourite one?
I've always loved how succinct sounds so deliciously like what it means.

Current least favourite word: validation.

12. Compose a short-short story in three sentences that include the following words: Hillman Library, weltschmerz, janitor.
It was a dark and stormy night. On the front porch of the Hillman Library, the janitor was mopping up the remains of a Primanti Bros sandwich when he saw a slip of paper eddying in the wind. Convinced it held some secret cosmic message meant just for him, he chased it down and read the words scrawled across it – Weltschmerz: the feeling experienced by an individual who believes that reality can never satisfy the expectations of the mind – and his entire life suddenly flashed before his eyes, a final flare of light before the dark claimed all.

13. What object is indispensable to you when you write?
A computer. I lost my ability to hand-write long-form texts in my undergrad years, when I first started typing out my assignments; and now I find that even composing short lyric poems works best on a computer screen. Having the option of moving chunks of text around at the touch of a button changes the thought process. I do feel it's a loss. 

14. What is the best time of the day for writing?
When I'm not in a regular day job – between 10pm and 3am. I'm an incorrigible night owl!

15. If you have a last supper, which three literary figures, real or fictional, would you invite to the soiree, and why?
Nonfictionists Anne Fadiman, Li Xiang 李向, and Oliver Sacks.

All three are/were masters of their craft, and each of them has been seminal for me in different ways. Fadiman and Sacks are probably familiar names to many. Li Xiang, aka Zhang Daofang张道昉, was my Dad's close friend, and an essayist, journalist, and former assistant chief editor with the Lianhe Zaobao. I discovered his writing only after he passed away. Reading his 散文 (san wen / essays) gave me permission to see writing as perhaps something I could do. He had such an interesting mind – to be honest, I have yet to find Singaporean nonfiction English writing with the same breadth of reference and suppleness of tone.

All three of them would make fantastic dinner companions, from what I see in their writing. Sacks and Uncle Daofang were born within two years of each other – I'd love to hear them swap thoughts on their life and times. Fadiman's most famous book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, is a work of medical anthropology that I'm sure Sacks would have read – they'd have a lot to talk about. Fadiman and Uncle Daofang share the same quirkily observant essayistic posture – I think they'd like each other's work.

Since this is a magical dinner party, they'd all magically speak the same language. I like to think the conversation would be sparkling and wide-ranging. Their writing shares a way of seeing that's deeply humane and open to the world, with a curiosity and whimsy that precludes self-importance, even in their personal essays. I'd love to sit with them, asking questions and serving up excellent food and wine, soaking it all in.

16. You graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Writing (Nonfiction) from the University of Pittsburgh. The term "creative nonfiction" has been bandied around for years, but there is no consensus about what it means. What makes a piece of nonfiction "creative" and another "non-creative," so to speak? Can you recommend a piece of creative non-fiction which has left a lasting impression on you, and why?
  That's a great question, and I could go on about it forever. How does one define "creativity"? And how much "creativity" is "enough"? I mean, even coming up with a fresh metaphor is a creative act.

For me, the nonfiction that's most easily recognisable as "creative" is the kind that breaks the usual structural "rules" of narrative or expository nonfiction. Innovation on a macro level, as opposed to linguistic inventiveness or creativity on a micro level. And not structural innovation for innovation's sake, because anyone can do that – but meaningful innovation that connects form with content.

Recommended reading: "Joyas Voladoras" by Brian Doyle. It's a gorgeous (and short!) lyric essay that begins with hummingbirds and whales, then leads the reader somewhere else entirely. I think it's one of those rare pieces of writing that "catch the heart off-guard and blow it open", to steal a line from Seamus Heaney. And it sounds beautiful when read out loud.

17. What would you write on your own tombstone?
My name, in English and Chinese, and my birth and death dates: words that cannot be misinterpreted in my absence. And a Christian cross – it's not technically a word, but it says everything I'd want to say at the end of things.  

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