Madeleine Lee is an investment manager and poet in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

Early life and education

Lee was educated at Raffles Girls School and subsequently at Hwa Chong Junior College. Lee has written poetry since she was 13. She was mentored by novelist

Suchen Christine Lim Suchen Christine Lim (born 1948) is a Malaysian-born Singaporean writer. She was the inaugural winner of the Singapore Literature Prize in 1992. Early life Lim was born in Ipoh, Federation of Malaya and had her early education at the Convent ...

. Lee's writing was said to be greatly influenced by her maternal grandmother, who single-handedly ran the family's bumboat business and brought up her six children. Lee eventually graduated in the United Kingdom with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics (Hons) and Accounting, and a Master of Business Administration in Finance. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst. In 2002, Lee received a prestigious

Eisenhower Fellowship Eisenhower Fellowships is a private, non-profit organization created in 1953 by a group of prominent American citizens to honor President Dwight D. Eisenhower for his contribution to humanity as a soldier, statesman, and world leader. The organiza ...

Career

Lee has sat on the boards of public and private companies in Singapore. She was the treasurer of the United Nations Development Fund for Women Singapore, and the president of the Raffles Girls School Alumni. She has been active in the Yong Siew Toh Music Conservatory of the

National University of Singapore The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national public research university in Singapore. Founded in 1905 as the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States Government Medical School, NUS is the oldest autonomous university in the c ...

, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and the International Women's Forum. She was also the deputy chief investment officer of the Investment Office of the

. As a writer, she has performed internationally at major literary festivals, including the Indonesia International Poetry Festival 2008, the

Ubud Writers Festival Ubud Writers & Readers Festival (UWRF) is an annual 4-day literary festival held every October in Ubud on the island of Bali, Indonesia. Established in 2004, it is considered Southeast Asia’s biggest and most meaningful literary Festival. It ...

2009, the Melbourne Writers Festival 2010, and the Hanoi Poetry Festival 2013. She has also been consistently featured in the

Singapore Writers Festival The Singapore Writers Festival is a literary event organised by the National Arts Council. Inaugurated in 1986, the festival serves a dual function of promoting new and emerging Singaporean and Asian writing to an international audience, as well ...

since 2003. Her collections have also been variously adapted, with ''y grec'' and ''one point six one eight'' being adapted for the stage by Cake Theatrical Productions in 2007 and 2013. In 2015, she was selected to represent Singapore writers in the ''Writing the City'' series of short films and interviews. Lee's work has also been adapted into other forms. The poem ''blue'' was interpreted into visual art, while the poem ''negative light'' was interpreted in dance by the Montreal Dance Troupe in 2004. Other poems like ''coffee'', ''caesura'', and ''ultraviolet'' were also adapted into film by Arts Central (2005), the Paris Poetry Festival (2012) and by Writing the City (British Council, 2015) respectively. In 2005 she co-produced the play 2nd Link with W!LDRICE and in 2011 produced ''Moving Worlds'', an anthology featuring Singapore poetry on the

MRT MRT may refer to: Transport Rapid Transit Systems * Mass Rapid Transit (disambiguation) * MRT (Singapore) or Mass Rapid Transit, Singapore * MRT (Bangkok) or Metropolitan Rapid Transit, Thailand * Manila Metro Rail Transit System, Philippine ...

. Lee also collaborated with two other Singaporean writers in 2003 for the creation of the National Online Repository of the Arts (NORA) within the National Library Board. The project sought to build and develop an online platform to showcase digitised literary works by prominent Singapore artists which were previously unpublished, out-of-print or inaccessible to the masses. NORA was launched in early 2009.

Works

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Madeleine 1962 births Living people Singaporean people of Chinese descent Singaporean poets Singaporean women poets Hwa Chong Junior College alumni Raffles Girls' Secondary School alumni CFA charterholders