Free to Play: A Video Games Anthology

Literature as a game. Gaming as literature. How are writers and artists interacting with video games, gaming, and notions of play?

Spanning fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, comics, and multimedia works from an international array of emerging and established voices, Free to Play: A Video Games Anthology is both a love letter to, and a bold exploration of what video games and gaming culture are and can be.

Guest contributors:

• Erica Eng (Eisner and Ringo award-winning creator of Fried Rice)
• Wen-yi Lim (Speculative fiction writer and author of When They Burned the Butterfly and The Dark We Know)
• Ken Liu (Nebula and Hugo award-winning author of The Dandelion Dynasty and The Paper Menagerie)
• Alvin Pang (Award-winning poet, 2022 Dublin Literary Award judge, and author of All That Is Left Of The Sea)

Other notable contributors:

• Meihan Boey (Dublin Literary Award Longlist, Winner of Singapore Book Awards 2022)
• Gabriela Lee (World Fantasy Award 2025 Winner)
• Myle Yan Tay (Winner of Singapore Book Awards 2024)

Games mentioned in the anthology include:

• Animal Crossing
• Fortnite
• God of War
• Pokémon
• Skyrim
• Super Mario Bros
• Venba
• World of Warcraft

Adan Jimenez is a writer, editor, and translator. He is the proud child of Mexican immigrant parents and became an immigrant himself when he moved to Singapore. He has been a gamer since his parents bought him an NES when he was six and he played the original Super Mario Bros. with his dad. He has played hundreds of games since then, of every genre and on (almost) every console, including PC and mobile. Adan is presently based in Singapore.

Daryl Lim Wei Jie 林伟杰 is a poet, editor, and translator from Singapore. His poetry collection Anything but Human was a finalist for the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize. He conceptualised two anthologies: Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet, which won a Special Award at the 2023 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, and The Second Link: An Anthology of Malaysian and Singaporean Writing, shortlisted for Best Literary Work at the Singapore Book Awards. He translated Short Tongue, a collection by the Singaporean Chinese poet Wang Mun Kiat. In 2023, He was awarded the Young Artist Award, Singapore’s highest award for young art practitioners. Daryl is presently based in Singapore

Joses Ho is a poet, pro-wrestler, and scientist. As tech sorcerer for SingPoWriMo, he archives and visualises the poetry posted. Joses also has interests in creative computing and generative text. His pamphlet Dogma was shortlisted for the inaugural Paper Jam series in 2021, and his manuscript Moving Downwards in a Straight Line was selected for Manuscript Bootcamp (organised by Sing Lit Station) in 2019. He is also a pro-wrestler and ring announcer with GrappleMax. Joses is presently based in Singapore.

Natalie Wang is more likely to play video games or write novel-length fanfictions than write poetry, but still calls herself a poet. She is based in Singapore and has been published in The Fairy Tale Review, Cartridge Lit, and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, amongst others. Her book The Woman Who Turned Into A Vending Machine is a collection of poems on metamorphosis, myth, and womanhood. Natalie is presently based in Singapore.