Hidayat Nordin is a Singaporean writer, theatre director, and cultural practitioner working across fiction, poetry, performance, and film in Malay and English. In 2025, he won the Golden Point Award — Singapore's most prestigious literary prize — taking both First Prize and Honourable Mention in short fiction in the same year. He was appointed Duta Bahasa (Malay Language Ambassador) by MBMS in 2025, in recognition of his sustained contribution to the Malay language and literary arts in Singapore.  

His poetry has appeared in publications across Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia, including a solo collection, Optimis (2020), supported by the National Arts Council. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Aras Theatre and co-founder of Meja Conteng, a writers' collective that has produced three publications and a nationwide poetry competition since its founding in 2024. A practitioner of dikir barat — a Malay oral performance tradition of call and response — he has also represented Singapore internationally at literary festivals in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Perak. 

His participation is made possible by the support of National Arts Council Singapore.