Role
2019 Keynote Speaker
Balli was born in Singapore with family having roots in Punjab. She grew up living in countries such as Japan, Russia, the Philippines, Australia and the United States of America. She is a global citizen with rich perspectives on language, arts and culture.
Balli is an award-winning author of four novels, including Singapore Literature Prize finalist Sugarbread, and the bestselling Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, which was a selection of Reese Witherspoon’s book club. Her debut novel Inheritance won the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelist award. A former writing fellow at the University of East Anglia, she teaches creative writing at Yale NUS College. Her non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan.com, Harper’s Bazaar India and Salon.com, among other publications. Her latest novel The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters was released internationally earlier this year.
It is in your blood — the language, the food, the way things are, these things are not erased just because you grew up elsewhere.
