The Lounge Chair Interview: 10 Questions with Jollin Tan

By Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Why do you write?

With my first book, I wrote to share things with people. I felt that I couldn’t be the only one who felt things too intensely and thought about certain things the way I did, and I wanted to share that – to sort of reach out, in a way, and say hey, look, you’re not alone, someone else feels this too. And I suppose to me writing is always a sort of bravery – when I write I always feel braver coming out of the situation, because putting something down in words always feels like confronting it. Mostly now it’s because I have things that need to be said, not because I think the world needs to hear them but because after I say them I feel more at peace? If that makes sense. This is all sounding very hippie-chick hahaha but I really do think that some things will haunt you until you write them/render them in some sort of form important to you, and then there are other things that will stay with you after, but everything is quieter after I write. So a very nice sum-up, I suppose, would be that I write for peace.