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A dozen short stories from the singular mind behind Lovelier, Lonelier and Kappa Quartet.

Being your best, most authentic self can be a somewhat grievous process. The winner of a beauty pageant bursts into flames the moment she is crowned. A man enters a dream and re-encounters a former lover in Pyongyang, North Korea. A gaggle of hipsters catches news of a secret Bon Iver concert playing somewhere on Dempsey Hill, only to risk the survival of their friendship.

Daryl Qilin Yam’s long-awaited first collection of short fiction combines magical realism, speculative autobiography and ekphrasis to weave illusory figures out of gung-ho millennials and the well-meaning mentor figures who fail them, and unveils the strange quests queer folk must embark on in order to keep a hold on love.
“An intimate portrayal of connections formed between friends, lovers and strangers, and the stories we tell in order to find meaning. Reminiscent of Rachel Cusk’s The Outline Trilogy but distinct in its observations of millennial life in Singapore, reading Be Your Own Bae is like eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers and coming away with a richer understanding of ourselves.”
—Balli Kaur Jaswal, bestselling author of Now You See Us

“Daryl’s stories are a paradox: breathtakingly experimental in form, but refusing melodrama and flourish. They’re like finely crafted bulbs of clear glass, capturing a queer-inclusive transnational Asian everyday with all their tensions and heartbreaks.”
—Ng Yi-Sheng, multi-award-winning author of Lion City

“Yam’s liquid prose carries us, dreamlike, through these stories. We flow through them and somehow they flow through us as well. The physical places his characters inhabit are as vivid as the rich inner worlds that they navigate. Their conversations sparkle with words spoken, words unspoken and words unspeakable.”
—Tania de Rozario, author of Dinner on Monster Island

“Daryl Qilin Yam masterfully traces quiet heartbreaks, unseen intimacies and urgent longings—the moments of inner epiphany that change everything. Be Your Own Bae is an expansive collection of stories charged with the pulse of the millennial generation. It is as brave and electrifying as a hand held open in the dark to the possibility of touch. It will arrest your heart.”
—Amanda Chong, poet and playwright
Daryl Qilin Yam is a writer and editor of prose and poetry, born and based in Singapore. His novella, Shantih Shantih Shantih (2021), optioned for the screen by Fiction Shore, was shortlisted for the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize for Fiction and was subsequently awarded by popular vote the Readers’ Favourite English Book; it will be released in a new edition in 2025 by Epigram Books. The manuscript of his second novel, Lovelier, Lonelier (2021), received a National Arts Council Creation Grant in 2017, and became a finalist for the 2021 Epigram Books Fiction Prize; the published work was then nominated by the National Library Board for the 2023 International Dublin Literary Award. His first novel, Kappa Quartet (2016), was longlisted for the inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize and was released by Epigram Books in Singapore and the UK; it was selected by The Business Times as one of the best novels of 2016. His writing has also appeared in periodicals and publications such as Berlin Quarterly, Mekong Review, Sewanee Review, The Straits Times and the Best New Singaporean Short Stories anthology series.

[SG Culture Pass] Eligible Epigram-published Titles

The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Seven

The Skinny Bibik Seeks Her Perfect Baba (Book 3)

Almost a Love Story

Shantih Shantih Shantih

Be Your Own Bae

The Waiting Room

The Grand Arcade

The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Six

There's No Stopping This Skinny Bibik (Book 2)

How to Date a Dozen Men

Eternal Summer of My Homeland

Fright 1: Winners of the 2022 Storytel Epigram Horror Prize