Avery (she/her) is a final-year student at Yale-NUS College studying cultural anthropology with a particular interest in queer, feminist theory. Her research archives how people find ways of living and loving otherwise against regimes of power that assign value to life based on capitalist production and cis/heteronormative reproduction. In her winning work, she documents in second person the biography of Steven, a young student-migrant to Singapore; she hopes the reader can serve as an affective witness to Steven’s quest for agency and meaning against the bureaucratic violence of a border regime that treats him only as an economic resource.

Avery hopes to pursue further studies in the humanities and creative writing, guided by her belief in words as a powerful resource for felt, embodied ways of knowing the world and healing from structural injustices. In her college life, she’s been a journalist, chef, seamstress, food reviewer, model, rally marshal, among other things; if not academia, she hopes to train as a hairstylist or staff a vintage shop.