Words worth keeping
Meena Devi
Year 4 · English Literature · Singapore I write about letters, diaries and the people who kept them. My honours thesis is about 1950s Singapore pen pals.
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Selected work
Dear Faraway Friend
Pen-pal columns in 1950s English-language papers connected thousands of local teenagers with strangers abroad. Almost nobody has read the letters people sent in.
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Slide 1 of 3: Dear Faraway Friend
Experience
Research Assistant
Faculty of Arts (literature department)
- Checked citations and sourced first editions for a lecturer's book manuscript.
- Built a reading list of 40 colonial-era periodicals.
Literature Tutor
Private tutoring
- Tutor secondary-school literature; one student went from C6 to A2.
- Make my own question banks from past papers.
More projects
Microfilm reader
Tuesday afternoons, reel 1954-B.
Slide 1 of 3: Microfilm reader
About
I've been reading other people's letters since I found my grandmother's box of airmail envelopes. I'm drawn to writing that wasn't meant to be literature: diaries, columns, marginalia, and the voices they keep.
My work is half archive, half close reading. I like long afternoons with microfilm and short, clear essays at the end of them.
I also run a monthly newsletter, sing alto in a small choir, and keep too many notebooks.
Education & community
Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English Literature, Year 4, Singapore.
Modules: Archive & Literature, Postcolonial Writing, Victorian Fiction, Book History, Creative Non-fiction.
Dean's List, AY2024/25. Editor of the department's undergraduate journal, 2025–26.
Kind words
Finds the one letter in a reel of 400 that changes the argument.
Honours supervisor, English Literature
Skills
- Research
- Archival research
- Microfilm
- Oral history interviews
- Zotero
- Writing
- Academic essays
- Creative non-fiction
- Editing
- Newsletter writing
- Digital
- Airtable
- Omeka (online exhibits)
- Basic Python for text
Recent updates
15 Sep 2026
7 Sep 2026
20 Aug 2026
18 May 2026
Sample portfolio · fictional student