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The art of academics: NUS Law graduate Ng Ziqin on pursuing artistic passions

July 14, 2025 | Alumni, Faculty

Ng Ziqin’s passion for the literary arts began before her NUS days. She started writing novels in secondary school, completing a coming-of-age novel, Every School a Good School, just before entering university. The book was a 2022 Epigram Books Fiction Prize finalist.

During her four years at NUS Law, Ziqin led University Court Friends, a pro bono project under the faculty’s pro bono group; served as Editor-in-Chief of its digital publication, Justified; and taught writing classes via Book-a-Writer, a programme started by literary non-profit SingLit Station.

For the 23-year-old, who lived on campus for two years under the NUS College (NUSC) programme, law and writing are two sides of the same craft. “NUS taught me what kind of lawyer — and person — I want to be,” she said. “I want to keep being someone who finds purpose in my job and maintains a personality and friends outside of work.”

NUS Law graduate Ng Ziqin, who began writing novels in secondary school, signing a copy of her debut work, Every School a Good School.

At NUSC, she honed her short-story writing skills through the Global Experience (GEx) Paris programme, choosing a course centred on the arts, diplomacy and social innovation. During the month-long programme, which included language classes and seminars, she found time to visit 18 museums in Brussels, Paris, Villers-Cotterêts and Giverny. This immersive journey inspired a collection of five short stories, titled Tales from the Pyramides, currently unpublished.

(top) Ziqin (in a grey coat) with her GEx Paris class outside the Africa Museum in Tervuren, Belgium. (above) The class, together with NUS College Visiting Senior Fellow Dr Mariana Losada (centre), sharing a meal in Paris.

Ziqin even found a way to merge her interest in law and creative writing. For instance, she joined the scriptwriting team for Law IV, an annual musical traditionally staged by the graduating law cohort.

(top) The Law IV production was brought to life by a scriptwriting team comprising Ziqin and two NUS Law graduates, Samuel Tay (left) and Hilman Lee, who also served as director. (above) They were supported by a spirited cast and crew who made the annual law revue a resounding success.

These creative projects are ways of “exploring authenticity”. This process is critical for Ziqin who “draws from lived experience” to pen her stories.

Ziqin will be preparing for the Bar exam in the coming months — but that doesn’t mean she is putting her creative work on the backburner. When time allows, she hopes to spend the latter half of 2025 working on her next novel, about a university student stranded with a Chinese ethnic minority tribe during a trip to China. The idea was sparked by her visit to Betel Nut Valley in Hainan, a lived experience she wishes to capture in writing.

Ziqin’s visits to the Louvre and Fondation Louis Vuitton inspired both her legal curiosity and her fiction. Artefacts such as the Joyeuse, the sword of Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne (top), and exhibitions like French artist Henri Matisse’s L’Atelier Rouge (above), found their way into her short stories.

 

This story was first published on 13 July, as part of NUS News’ coverage of Commencement 2025, which celebrates the achievements of our graduates from the Class of 2025. Click here for more NUS News stories. 

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