Topaz Winters (she/they) is an internationally-award winning, critically-acclaimed poet, essayist, editor, performer, curator, & scholar. Topaz is the author of three full-length poetry collections (most recently So, Stranger, Button Poetry, forthcoming May 2022), & the founder & editor-in-chief of the publishing house, literary journal, & arts organisation Half Mystic. Their peer-reviewed research on poetry, identity, & the sociopolitical underpinnings of queerness in Singapore is published in the Journal of Homosexuality, the oldest existing scholarly journal focused on the study of gender & sexuality, & is taught at the University of Southern California's doctorate programme in educational leadership.
Topaz’s work has been published in & featured by venues from The Straits Times to American Banker to the Singapore Writers Festival to the Boston Poetry Slam to the Center for Fiction to the Academy of American Poets. They are the youngest Singaporean ever to be nominated for the Pushcart Prize & the youngest scholar ever to be published in the Journal of Homosexuality. In 2017 they gave the TEDx talk Healing Is a Verb. They are the writer & star of the critically-acclaimed short film SUPERNOVA (recipient of awards from the Newark International, Across Asia Youth, Laurie Nelson, My Rode Reel, Singapore International Student, & CINE Golden Eagle Film Festivals), & they write the annual column Silver-Tipped Swallow for Half Mystic Journal.
Topaz was born in 1999 & is in their third year of studying English Literature, Creative Writing, Italian, & Visual Art at Princeton University. They like bees, baklava, & bookstores.