Yong Shu Hoong was born in 1966 in Singapore. In 1990, he graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Computer Science degree.
From 1992 to 1993, he studied at the graduate business school of Texas A&M University at College Station. It was during these one and a half years spent in America that he wrote most of the poems which later became Pangs of Hunger, an anthology shortlisted for the 1995 Singapore Literature Prize.
He currently works in Singapore as a journalist. His writings have appeared in publications like BigO, The New Paper, The Straits Times and on Web sites like Orientation.
Isaac is his first book, featuring poems written between 1992 and 1997, including several taken from the never-published Pangs of Hunger. The book was nominated for National Book Development Council of Singapore's Book Award. One of the poems, "The Sobering Age," was chosen by the 1999 Poems On The Move program to be displayed on Mass Rapid Transit trains, and at bus stops and public housing estates.
