Elaine Chiew is a writer and visual arts researcher based in London. Her short story collection The Heartsick Diaspora (Penguin SEA 2019 & Myriad Editions UK 2020) explores the Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese diaspora living primarily in London, New York, and Singapore; it has been mentioned as a recommended read in The Guardian, The Straits Times Singapore, BookRiot and Esquire SG, been featured in literary festivals in Singapore, Malaysia and Kerala, received a Special Mention in the UK Saboteur Awards and reviewed favourably in Malaysia, Singapore, UK and US. She is also the compiler/editor of Cooked Up: Food Fiction From Around the World (New Internationalist, 2015). Twice winner of the Bridport Short Story Competition in the UK, she has had numerous stories published in Singapore, US and UK anthologies, most recently with BBC Radio Four and in The Best Asian Short Stories (Kitaab International, 2021).  She has been shortlisted and long listed in numerous competitions, most recently in 2021, in the Mogford Prize for Food and Drink, MsLexia, Fish and Cambridge Short Story Prize, and in 2020, in The Manchester Short Story Prize. Her articles on arts and culture have appeared in ArtReview Asia, Ocula and ArtsEquator, and she has made guest appearances on BBC Radio London, Open Book for BBC Radio 4  as well as  BBC Cultural Frontline. 

Originally from Ipoh, Malaysia, she has a J.D. from Stanford Law School and has had a prior career as a corporate securities lawyer working in New York, Hong Kong and London with New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell before going in-house with Goldman Sachs. In 2017, she received an MA in Asian Art History from Goldsmiths, University of London  and has worked as a Research Officer for the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore as well as Asia Curator for The Creative Process, an interdisciplinary initiative hosting travelling exhibitions to leading universities around the world. In 2017, she was selected as Writer-in-Residence at SOTA Singapore. In 2021, she was awarded a grant from the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre in collaboration with LASALLE School of the Arts to conduct art historical research into Chinese photography at the turn of the 20th century, and will be based in Singapore until July 2022.