Linda Collins (she/her)

is a memoirist, poet, fiction writer, journalist, and editor. She is also a mental-health care advocate, and co-founder of the PleaseStay.movement for youth suicide prevention in Singapore.

A transnational writer (Singapore/New Zealand), Linda started writing creatively in 2017, three years after the death  by suicide of her 17-year-old daughter, Victoria McLeod. That year, Linda wrote her memoir Loss Adjustment, which became New York-based Singapore Unbound’s Book of the Year 2019 and was shortlisted for Singapore Book of the Year 2020.

Linda’s personal essays and other nonfiction and commentaries have appeared in, among others,  tss.co.uk, Literary Mama, The Straits Times, The  Spinoff (NZ), Turbine, and Newsroom (NZ).  Her poetry is in publications including Cordite, The Blue Nib, prometheus dreaming, and Oyster River Pages. She is  undertaking an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of East Anglia. She also has an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand (2017).

Linda was formerly a newspaper copyeditor on The Straits Times, The Business Times, The Australian Financial Review, The Sydney Daily Telegraph, The Australian, The Hawke’s Bay Herald-Tribune, and the UK’s The Times, The Mirror, The European and The Sun, among others.

Linda (left) at a mental-health discussion and book
signing at Wardah Books, Singapore.

Photo: Wardah Books.