From Singapore to Canada to the Moon: Kelly Kaur Writes Beyond Borders
Defiant writer finds her stories and her voice — accent and all — have an audience
If writer Kelly Kaur had a motto for her current stage of life, it would be “Kelly Kaur: Defy.”
“I spent so much of my time not doing that,” she explains. “Now I just don’t care! Rebellious, grumpy old me.”
Named one of Canada’s top 25 immigrants in 2024, Kaur came to Canada from Singapore in 1985, earning multiple degrees in literature and becoming an instructor at Mount Royal University (a college at the time) in 1990. Today, her prose and poetry have been published all over the world.
But it wasn’t always this way.
For decades, Kaur had given up on her lifelong dream of writing. Worn down by rejections and silenced by people questioning her accent, Kaur didn’t see a place for her work. “I grew up on a steady diet of American and British writers, even in Singapore,” she says, “so I didn’t bother writing because I didn’t know where they would fall, my stories.”
Courses on post-colonial literature exposed her to a richer diversity of writers, however, and a big turning point came when Kaur competed in the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking in 2017. This success showed her that her stories and voice — accent and all — had an audience.
The pandemic prompted her to return to writing as a way to find joy. With rekindled passion, she began to send out her writing internationally. “It’s crazy that that little girl from Singapore and immigrant in Canada can break through even later in the writing stage. What if I’d given up? What if I didn’t try?” she wonders. “Now, when I see something that fascinates me, I just sit down and write.”
Kaur’s perspective as an immigrant is integral to her work, which explores themes of race colour, immigration and the plight of women. Take her 2022 novel, Letters to Singapore, which shows different South Asian women finding their own paths to happiness. “But the themes of marriage, love, family life and death, those are universal,” adds Kaur.
The same impulse towards cross-cultural connection underpins her forthcoming children’s book, Howdy, I’m Singh Hari, which tells the true story of a Punjabi pioneer who arrived in Canada in 1910 and became one of Calgary’s wealthiest citizens. It’s rare to see children’s books featuring a person wearing a turban, observes Kaur. “If that were normalized, I think it would help the idea of ‘we are all the same.’”
That might be why Kaur’s work was selected to go to the moon as part of the Lunar Codex project. “All voices and people have a place in space,” she comments. The project represents artistic work from 261 countries and 149 Indigenous Nations, representing a global cultural heritage. Kaur’s poem “A Singaporean’s Love Affair” departed last February, and Letters to Singapore will launch this November.
Closer to home, Kaur also fosters creativity through her students. As a practising writer herself, she uses the same writing methods she teaches her classes and also understands their struggles. Beyond imparting techniques, Kaur instills confidence in her students and helps them find their voices. She makes them repeat “I am a writer!” — and if they ask what she wants from them as their professor, she has a cheeky answer. “I tell them I want money, I want travel and I want a fast car,” she says. “So it’s not what I want, but it’s what they want as a writer, so I always show them how powerful it is to write.”
For Kaur, every new piece of writing is worth celebrating, and she continues to conquer self-doubt to share her stories with the world. “When I finish a piece of writing … I just can’t believe it,” says Kaur. “You know, it’s that little girl in Singapore again saying, I don’t think I can do this. And then the better version of me saying, Oh, really? Defy.”