Young Heroes Claiming Old Myths: Big Worlds, Bravery, and Fantasy for Kids
PanelLow Ying Ping, Tori Tadiar, Vivian Teo | Moderator: Victor Ocampo
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Fantasy books are both captivating and empowering: drawing us into bigger worlds, allowing us to step into the shoes of bigger stories, and change destiny. They can also be vehicles for history and heritage, giving fresh spins to folklore. Join these three authors, turning ancient mythologies and history into brand new quests and brave new worlds for children of the current day, as they explore what makes myth so enduring and what makes young heroes in fantasy so powerful.
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Low Ying Ping (Singapore)
Low Ying Ping made her US debut this year with the middle grade novel, Song of the Yellow Dragon. She has previously published two middle grade fantasy series, Mount Emily and Prophecy of the Underworld, in Singapore. She has also written for younger children: a three-volume English adaptation of the Chinese classic, Journey to the West, and a picture book titled Starlight in a Bottle. Her books have won the Singapore Book Awards and were shortlisted for the Hedwig Anuar Children’s Book Award and the Popular Readers’ Choice Award. A short story has also won second prize in the British Fantasy Society’s short story competition.
Tori Tadiar (Philippines)
Tori Tadiar is an award-winning illustrator and comic artist from the Philippines. She is an IT professional by day and works on comics and stories every chance she can get. Her goal is to tell stories that introduce readers to and immerse them in alternate worlds based on the culture of the land she calls home. Tori is the author and artist of the graphic novels Sagala and Twinkle, Twinkle; and the illustrator of the chapter book Team Abangers at Ang Estilong Trumpo. She is currently working on the Philippine folklore-inspired middle grade comic series Ilustra, published by Disney-Hyperion.
Vivian Teo (Singapore)
Vivian Teo is the author of middle-grade book series My BFF Is an Alien and Mikaela Kong, published by Epigram Books. Her books have been shortlisted for the Hedwig Anuar Children’s Book Award, the Singapore Book Awards and the POPULAR Readers’ Choice Awards.
Vivian is also a freelance writer whose work has appeared in CNA and CNA Lifestyle. She enjoys writing about parenting, education, social and financial issues, and blogging on her parenting/lifestyle website, The Stuff Childhoods Are Made Of, at vivianteo.com.
Victor Ocampo (Singapore)
Victor Fernando R. Ocampo is the author of the International Rubery Book Award shortlisted The Infinite Library and Other Stories (Math Paper Press, 2017; Gaudy Boy, 2021; Vibal, 2025 ) and Here be Dragons (Canvas Press, 2015), which won the Romeo Forbes Children’s Story Award in 2012. His experimental interactive fiction piece The Book of Red Shadows debuted at the Singapore Writers Festival in 2020 (Spaceship 13/Luck-IT) and its prequel story in an escape room format (with Tusitala), in 2026.
His writing has appeared in many publications including Apex, Future Fiction, Strange Horizons, 科幻世界 (Science Fiction World) and The Quarterly Literature Review of Singapore, as well as anthologies like The Best New Singapore Short Stories, Fish Eats Lion: New Singaporean Speculative Fiction, LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, as well as the World Fantasy-award winning Mapping New Stars: A Sourcebook on Philippine Speculative Fiction.
Programme dates and times are subject to change.