Topaz Winters

Topaz Winters (born September 25, 1999) is the pen name of Singaporean-American writer Priyanka Balasubramanian Aiyer.

Early life and education
Winters was born in the United States and grew up in Singapore from when she was seven years old. She graduated from Princeton University in 2023 with a B.A. in English and certificates in Creative Writing, Visual Art, and Italian. There, she studied poetry and fiction under Danez Smith, Monica Youn, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Career
Winters writes on illnesses such as depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, dissociative amnesia and hyperacusis, as well as her experiences of being a queer and disabled woman of color and an immigrant.

She is the author of the chapbook "Heaven or This" (2016) and the full-length poetry collections "poems for the sound of the sky before thunder" (Math Paper Press 2017), "Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing" (2019), and "So, Stranger" (Button Poetry 2022). In 2024, Button Poetry issued a reprint of her second, self-published book "Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing" in a five year anniversary edition, with new poems and a foreword by Blythe Baird.

She is the youngest author to be published by Math Paper Press, the youngest Singaporean nominee for the Pushcart Prize, and the youngest visiting author at several MFA programs across the United States.

She is the editor-in-chief at the publishing house and literary journal Half Mystic, which has published work by KB Brookins, Alexandra Eldridge, Mree, and The Haunt. In 2023 she founded the online literary magazine Kopi Break with Max Pasakorn and Kendrick Loo, publishing new voices in Singaporean poetry.

Winters wrote and appeared in the 2017 short film SUPERNOVA (directed by Ishan Modi). With Crispin Rodrigues, she is the co-curator of the 2020 Singapore Writers Festival digital installation Letters From Home to Home. She embarked on a book tour across the East Coast in celebration of "So, Stranger" in 2022, performing with musicians and writers in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. She has performed her poetry at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Center for Fiction, and the Singapore Writers Festival.

Her peer-reviewed scholarly paper "Queering Poetics: The Impact of Poetry on LGBT+ Identity in Singaporean Adolescents" was published in the Journal of Homosexuality when she was 19 years old. She is the youngest author to be published in this journal.

Poems

 * "Idol". The Drift. 2024
 * "Nocturne for Changing the Subject". Passages North. 2024
 * "Self Portrait as Methods of Survival". The Boiler. 2023
 * "It's Not That I'm Angry". Poets.org. 2022
 * "Home Ghazal (Alvin Says, It is What We Love That Gives Us Our Names)". Hobart. 2022
 * "Terrible Things Are Happening in New Jersey!". The Ex-Puritan. 2022
 * "Arrival", "That Summer I Wrote the Same Poem Over & Over". Diode Poetry Journal. 2021
 * "& When I Say the Word Hunger You Know I’m Speaking of Resurrection". Tinderbox Poetry Journal. 2020
 * "I Found a New World Across the Sea". Under a Warm Green Linden. 2019
 * "The Night You Are Diagnosed". DIALOGIST. 2019
 * "Every Day the Same Story About Immigrants". Ghost City Review. 2019
 * "About This Morning", "Lovesong to Vernal Equinox, Standard Time". Tenderness Lit. 2019
 * "When my First Boyfriend Learned I Was on Anti-Psychotics, He Laughed & Told Me He Always Suspected I was Crazier than I Let On". Birdfeast. 2019
 * "Origin Story". Occulum. 2018
 * "War Story With My Father". Sundog Lit. 2018
 * "I Start Crying During the Best Part of the Film". Rust+Moth. 2016

Books

 * So, Stranger. Button Poetry. 2022. ISBN 9781638340249
 * Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing. Button Poetry. 2019. ISBN 9781733881609
 * poems for the sound of the sky before thunder. Math Paper Press. 2017. ISBN 9789811137792

Scholarly papers

 * Queering Poetics: The Impact of Poetry on LGBT+ Identity in Singaporean Adolescents. Journal of Homosexuality, 67:2, 206-222. DOI 10.1080/00918369.2018.1536415

Edited

 * You Make Yourself Another. Lucy Hannah Ryan. Half Mystic Press. 2023. ISBN 9781948552158
 * Half Mystic Journal, Issue X: Elegy. Half Mystic Press. 2022
 * Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo. Hazem Fahmy. Half Mystic Press. 2022. ISBN 9781948552110
 * Half Mystic Journal, Issue IX: Synaesthesia. Half Mystic Press. 2021
 * Half Mystic Journal, Issue VIII: Sforzando. Half Mystic Press. 2020
 * Say Mother Say Hand. Marie Conlan. Half Mystic Press. 2020. ISBN 9781948552103
 * The Family That Carried Their House on Their Backs. Sammie Downing. Half Mystic Press. 2019. ISBN 9781948552080
 * Hag. Tamara Jobe. Half Mystic Press. 2019. ISBN 9781948552066
 * Half Mystic Journal, Issue VII: Aubade. Half Mystic Press. 2019
 * Half Mystic Journal, Issue VI: Interlude. Half Mystic Press. 2018
 * Crowd Surfing With God. Adrienne Novy. 2018. ISBN 9781948552028
 * Half Mystic Journal, Issue V: Cadenza. Half Mystic Press. 2018
 * Knock. Melissa Atkinson Mercer. Half Mystic Press. 2017. ISBN 9781948552004
 * Half Mystic Journal, Issue IV: Grazioso. Half Mystic Press. 2017
 * Half Mystic Journal, Issue III: Nocturne. Half Mystic Press. 2017
 * Half Mystic Journal, Issue II: Saudade. Half Mystic Press. 2016
 * Half Mystic Journal, Issue I: Allegro. Half Mystic Press. 2016

Personal life
Winters moved to New York City after graduating from Princeton University in 2023. She is single and uses she/they pronouns. She owns a black cat named Volta.