Company Line: Singapore’s First Queer Army Anthology

Company Line is a literary anthology of queer army stories from Singapore.

Mandatory military service for young men is a fundamental pillar of Singapore’s cultural identity and conceptualizations of masculinity. The colonial-era law Section 377A that criminalizes homosexuality further informs the ways in which normative ideas of gender are perpetually reinforced into the Singapore’s body politic. For queer folk in Singapore, their time in military service is articulated through shame and trauma, but also through joy and perseverance.

Unfortunately, these experiences are rarely given space. Though Singapore-based writers such as Alfian Sa’at and Cyril Wong have made significant efforts in trying to subvert imposed stipulations of queer identity in the public arena, there has yet to be a volume of work that addresses the intersection between queerness and militarism in Singapore from a personal and literary point of view.

My goal is to create such a work by curating a diverse literary collection featuring writing from 12 queer Singaporean writers who have completed or are in the process of completing their military service. This work aims to expand Singapore’s queer imaginary by spotlighting stories that are deliberately forgotten by the state and society. Company Line will contribute an honest, innovative and interconnective body of work to Singapore’s literary oeuvre. More pressingly, I hope that it is a beacon of hope for LGBTQIA+ Singaporeans in understanding, validating and healing their queer identities. 

Call for submissions is from October 6th 2020 - December 31st 2020. The anthology will be curated in the following year.

Link to the application form can be found here.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScpqoD_3oqTjfWVhZnQe67Ptrn99GlePkZFt_bazxxDSe7etw/viewform