[PRESS RELEASE] From Emptiness to Fullness: Difference Engine Launches Short Comic on Eating Disorders, “To the Last Gram”

28 March 2025, Singapore — Too big. Too small. Wanting to feel special. Never feeling like you’re enough. These familiar emotional refrains of adolescence come flooding back through the pages of To the Last Gram, Difference Engine’s first comic of 2025 releasing on 28 April. The full-length comic debut of writer Shreya Davies and illustrator Vanessa Wong, this young adult fiction comic captures the experience of living with an eating disorder (ED) through the lens of young Divya as she navigates the changes within her growing body alongside the desires and expectations that come with it. 

To the Last Gram is the fourth addition to Difference Engine’s DE Shorts imprint, a range of short comics that shed light on social issues and shared conundrums through stories of lived experience. Divya’s coming-of-age story in To the Last Gram might begin with scenes familiar to anyone’s childhood growing up in 1990s Singapore: going to school, learning new things, and making new friends. But as a young Indian girl, she also starts to see that she is in many ways different – the size and shape of her body, the texture of her hair, the languages she speaks, her family’s eating habits and routines – from those around her. We see how racism, prejudice, bullying, and expectations of gender all play a part in fracturing Divya’s relationship with food and her own body, even in a diet-free household that celebrates all kinds of food.

Lending a sensitive voice tinged with humour and irony to the heavy subject of EDs, Davies’ introspective writing opens a window into Divya’s emotional journey as she negotiates the tumultuous relationship between her mind and body through puberty, adolescence, and adulthood. Grappling with the inscrutable changes they bring, it’s a process of learning and unlearning as she tries to find a balance within, picking up the pieces when things come undone and stitching herself back together when it falls apart like motif of the patchwork quilt that runs through the comic.

Divya’s world is captured by Wong in a warm two-colour orange and brown, dancing across pages with artwork that densely but unhurriedly fills each panel, often spilling out across spreads. Instead of depicting the literal and embodied, Wong instead uses surrealism and imagery to evoke a sense of the uncanny. Her illustrations play with scale and proportion to depict a world seen through Divya’s eyes, warped with a visceral sense of anxiety and self-consciousness as Divya faces the scrutiny of others and herself in scenes both heartbreaking and tender.

Divya’s journey echoes various accounts of both disordered eating and eating disorders, encountered by Davies through intimate observations of real-life experience and research into personal blogs and memoirs. The throughline that Davies hopes to emphasise is how isolating the illness can be, and the unseen mental and emotional conflicts that take place in the mind of someone with an ED. Davies shares, “This is an issue close to my heart, and I’ve always wanted to talk about it in some way. As a condition that’s often misunderstood, I felt that it was important for people to also see EDs through the lens of a minority living in Southeast Asia and the layers of stigma when you’re growing up as someone who is made conscious of how they take up space in the world – whether it is because of the colour of your skin or the size of your body.”

Wong adds, “Working on To the Last Gram has really opened my eyes to the challenges that come with untangling the complex experience of EDs. As an illustrator, it was an exercise in listening, being open, and asking questions to understand what goes on in Divya’s head. I wanted the art to capture the nuances of living with an ED and its different facets: both the hard-hitting moments that we shouldn’t shy away from, but also the vulnerability and triumphs that are a part of the journey.”

To the Last Gram has received much praise from early readers who lauded the comic for its unflinching look into the subject, with Pooja Nansi, poet and author of We Make Spaces Divine, calling it “a fierce, funny, and deeply poignant exploration of body, hunger, and belonging… both a scalpel and a salve.” Tania De Rozario, visual artist and author of Dinner on Monster Island, also appreciates the way that it “peels back layers of stigma and silence surrounding disordered eating.” Playwright and author of Fat Shame Joel Tan describes the comic as one that “speaks with so much compassion and hard-won wisdom to the acidic voice in our culture.”

Difference Engine Co-Founder and Publisher Felicia Low-Jimenez shares, “To the Last Gram is exactly the kind of story we feel the world needs. We’re grateful to Shreya for bringing us such an emotionally resonant story, and Vanessa for helping put Divya’s ineffable journey into images when words do not feel like enough. To the Last Gram shows us the capacity for comics to take on even the most challenging of stories, and we hope to continue pushing those boundaries.”

Echoing those remarks, Davies emphasises, “I hope the one message that can be taken from this comic is that recovery is a long journey, but a hopeful one nonetheless. To the Last Gram  is not about recovering from an ED, but about living with one.”

To the Last Gram retails at $22.00 SGD (w/o GST) and is now available for preorder till 28 April 2025 through the following channels: 

• Difference Engine’s webstore
• Book Bar

Download the To the Last Gram press kit here.

Follow Difference Engine on:
Website: https://differenceengine.sg
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/differenceenginesg
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/differenceenginesg

For enquiries, contact:
Olivia Djawoto (Marketing and Communications Manager, Difference Engine) at olivia@differenceengine.sg

ABOUT THE WRITER

Shreya Davies is an editor based in Singapore, and has worked on comics, literary fiction, and non-fiction publications. 

To the Last Gram is her first foray into writing a comic. Her short stories have previously been published in The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories (Vol 4) and Mahogany Journal. 

She never leaves home without a book in tow and enjoys long walks to nowhere in particular with her husband.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Vanessa Wong is an illustrator and graphic designer from Singapore.

Initially starting with an interest in drawing, Vanessa then pursued further studies at Nanyang Technological University (NTU)’s School of Art, Design and Media, where she received a Bachelor’s in Fine Art (Design Art) specialising in Visual Communication. Since then, in addition to practising graphic design, she has been given opportunities to share her art through collaborations with other creatives and commissions for different companies and brands.

As a generally uncertain person who is not very good with words, Vanessa thinks that drawing better conveys what she intends to say. With a keen interest in storytelling, she enjoys creating characters and environments that are inspired by the mundanity of everyday life and injecting them with a tad bit of humour. Drawn to the places, people, and daily occurrences around her, she hopes to create works that are able to resonate with people from different walks of life.