Villain Era: The Anti-Hero Unpacked

About the Programme

Why do we care about and root for characters like Batman and Hamlet? What draws us to protagonists who are morally messy, contradictory, and sometimes downright dangerous — and why have storytellers kept returning to this figure for centuries?

Join novelists Myle Yan Tay (catskull) and Wen-Yi Lee (When They Burned the Butterfly) for an informal and lively conversation on one of storytelling's most enduring and beloved archetypes — the anti-hero. The two authors will trace the evolution of the anti-hero across pop culture, film and storytelling, before turning to their own fictional creations and what drew them to writing characters that resist easy moral judgement.

Leave with:

• A richer understanding of the anti-hero trope and why morally grey characters capture our hearts

• A new way of looking at the protagonists you love, informed by the writers of two anti-heroes

• Food for thought on what our obsession with the anti-hero says about us and the world we live in

About the Presenters

Myle Yan Tay  is a writer of plays and prose. His debut novel,  catskull, won Book of the Year and Best Literary Work at the Singapore Book Awards and was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. His plays  Statement Piece  and  Brown Boys Don't Tell Jokes  were staged by Checkpoint Theatre; both were nominated for "Best Production" and "Best Script" at the Straits Times! Life Theatre Awards. He has published essays, reviews, and fiction in The Hong Kong Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Chicago Reader, and more. He co-hosts "Comic Sans," produced by Andas Productions, an award-winning podcast about comics for those who are sans knowledge.

Wen-yi Lee  is the Nebula Award-nominated author of  When They Burned the Butterfly  and  The Dark We Know, and editor of forthcoming horror anthology  The Kids Came Back Wrong. Her work, including her short fiction, often finds intersections of history, speculation, troubling women, and ghosts. Find her on…