Hello there! It's me, Kirsten. I run the We, The Citizens newsletter.
I'm an independent journalist from Singapore. I've written for a range of publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and Rest of World. My first book, The Singapore I Recognise: Essays on home, community and hope, was published in September 2023. (A Taiwanese edition in Traditional Chinese is also available.)
Nice things—apart from job satisfaction, that is—have come out of all this writing. In 2018, I received an Honourable Mention for the World Justice Project’s Anthony Lewis Prize for Exceptional Rule of Law Journalism. The next year, I won a Human Rights Press Award for commentaries on freedom of expression in Singapore at a time when the government was pushing through problematic legislation to tackle "fake news". In 2024, my essay, 'Singapore Will Always Be At War', won the Portside Review Human Rights Essay Prize. (You can find the lecture I delivered as prize winner here.)
I started We, The Citizens in 2018 to discuss Singaporean issues through a human rights lens, and also to demonstrate that there is a lot of civil society activity here. The "Singaporeans are all politically apathetic" stereotype isn't true!
I started Altering States, a secondary newsletter, in 2023. Unlike We, The Citizens, Altering States is an irregular newsletter and focuses specifically on drugs and drug policy. There are so few spaces in Singapore for us to interrogate the prohibitionist "war on drugs" approach, but critical perspectives on our punitive policies are so important and desperately urgent. Altering States documents my journey of unlearning entrenched narratives and prejudices and relearning about drugs, substance use, and how we can address harms in more just, compassionate and—most importantly—effective ways.
With We, The Citizens and Altering States, I can't promise "objective" or "neutral" journalism. My background, experiences, and politics inform how I see the world, and therefore how I write about it. This newsletter is definitely opinionated, but I strive to be fair, open and transparent. If you have any corrections, feedback or comments, you can always contact me.
These are some of the questions that inform my approach to this newsletter:
- What would be useful to readers and subscribers?
- How can I contribute to public discourse in Singapore?
- What would be informative for people wanting to learn more about Singapore? How do I balance the need to be accessible to people newer to Singapore with details, depth, history and (also very importantly) Singlish?
- How can I create more space for discourse and marginalised perspectives?
- How can I make people feel like they are part of a community, that we are building connections and friendships?
Ultimately, if you subscribe to this newsletter, you'll be getting a different perspective of Singapore than what you see elsewhere. While I curate news stories from the local mainstream media, I ask different questions and provide commentary from a different angle. I also often report on things that might not make it into mainstream coverage.
Right now, this newsletter has over 4,000 subscribers, of which almost 300 are Milo Peng Funders. This support has allowed me to keep it running independently and start things like the Kaya Toast Mini-Mentorship Initiative, which is my effort to share what I've learnt and build capacity for politically engaged writing in Singapore.
Milo Peng Funders' support also allows me to keep contributing my time and energy to civil society activities. I've been an anti-death penalty activist since 2010, and am currently a member of the Transformative Justice Collective.
Does all this sound good to you? If so, join the We, The Citizens community!