Jean Tay

Tay is the daughter of an orthopaedic surgeon and a chemistry teacher. She studied at Singapore Chinese Girls' School and National Junior College, and won a scholarship from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to attend Brown University.[2] This was where she began practising creative writing under the tutelage of Nilo Cruz and Paula Vogel.

She earned early successes in fiction, winning the Golden Point Short Story Award for "Journey" in 1995 and the Weston Undergraduate Prize for Fiction for "The Story" in 1997. She ultimately graduated from Brown University in 1997 with a double degree in creative writing and economics, and spent seven years working as an economist at the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

In 2000, her short play The Knot won the first prize in Action Theatre's 10-Minute Play Competition and chosen as a finalist for the Actors Theatre of Louisville's 10-Minute Play Contest.[3] In 2006, her play Everything But the Brain won Best Original Script at the Life! Theatre Awards. In 2007, she attended an International Playwriting Residency with the Royal Court Theatre in London, which was where she developed the play Boom. Both Everything But the Brain and Boom have been selected as Singapore Ministry of Education O-Level and N-Level literature texts.

She worked with the Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) as Resident Playwright from 2006 to 2009, also heading SRT's Young Company’s Writing Programme in 2012.

In 2015, she co-founded Saga Seed Theatre, where she remains the Artistic Director. The company's roots lie in her belief that "new voices and stories need to be given a platform to be heard, and writers need a supportive environment to learn and grow."[4]

Tay's earliest plays explored the subjugation of women under traditional Chinese patriarchy, as in the case of Water from the Well, which looks at female infanticide, and The Knot, which shows a woman escaping the bonds of marriage.[2] Her later works consider family ties in broader terms, as in the case of Everything but the Brain deals with a woman whose physicist father is dying of a stroke, and Boom, in which a son attempts to persuade his mother to let allow her apartment to be demolished.[5] A more recent interest involves the exploration of Singaporean history and myth, as seen in works such as Sisters – The Untold Stories of the Sisters Islands and Senang.[6][7]

Tay has also delved into the world of musical theatre with works like The Admiral's Odyssey, Man of Letters and The Great Wall Musical: One Woman's Journey, as well as site-specific theatre, with Chinatown Crossings.[8][9]

• 1998: Water from the Well
• 1999: The Knot
• 2000: Hopper's Women (co-written with Cindy Koh)
• 2000: Plunge
• 2005: Everything but the Brain
• 2005: The Admiral's Odyssey
• 2006: Man of Letters
• 2008: Boom
• 2013: Sisters – The Untold Stories of the Sisters Islands
• 2014: Senang
• 2015: It Won't Be Too Long: The Cemetery (Dusk) / 在不久的将来之《坟场》
• 2016: The Shape of a Bird
• 2017: The Great Wall Musical: One Woman’s Journey
• 2018: Chinatown Crossings

• Boom (2009, Epigram Books) ISBN 9789810840174
• Everything but the Brain (2010, Epigram Books) ISBN 9789810855116
• Saint (2016, Ethos Books) ISBN 978-981-09-6095-7
• Sisters & Senang: The Island Plays (2018, Epigram Books) ISBN 9789814785907