The biennial Singapore Prize, which awards authors for their published works in any of the city-state’s four official languages, has expanded this year to include 12 top prizes of up to $10,000 each for fiction, non-fiction and poetry submissions. Previously, fiction competed against poetry for one award in each language.
In a night of firsts, the prize awarded its first woman winner for English poetry and crowned double winners in both Chinese and English fiction. Marylyn Tan won the English poetry category for her edgy debut collection, Gaze Back, in which she tackles taboo topics from menstruation to sexuality. The award was also won by a newcomer in the program’s history, who took home both the Chinese fiction and the Chinese creative nonfiction prize for her account of a lost housing estate, Dakota Crescent, which she co-authored with journalist Akshita Nanda.
The inaugural English comic or graphic novel prize was awarded to Kenfoo for Cockman (2022), in which a chicken from another dimension finds itself stranded on Earth, “a satire on total lack of seriousness and compromise, over-the-top audacity and absurdity.” Translator Jeremy Tiang won the translation prize for his work with Chinese author Zhang Yueran on his book Cocoon (1922). The prize for Singapore history received 26 entries, leading judges to issue special commendations without attendant cash awards: Leluhur: Singapore’s Kampong Gelam by Hidayah Amin (available here) and Theatres Of Memory: Industrial Heritage Of 20th Century Singapore by Lynn Wong, Alex Tan, Koh Keng We, Tan Teng Phee and Juria Toramae (available here).
A pair of books written by former Straits Times journalist Chia Joo Ming and former foreign correspondent Clara Chow shared the English non-fiction prize. Their SG50-centric novels, Kian Kok and Dakota Crescent, were both set in the former British colony’s tumultuous past. Both works explore the ways in which a nation is defined by its shared stories.
This year, the prize also included a new Readers’ Choice award, in which the public voted for their favorite shortlisted title. More than 4,000 people cast their ballots, roughly twice the number who voted in 2020. The winning titles were:
A distinguished jury led by NUS Distinguished Professor Kishore Mahbubani, who is also the current prize’s jury chair, will select the winner and announce it in October. The prize’s tagline references American social scientist Benedict Anderson’s idea that nations are ‘imagined communities’ whose shared imagination is the critical glue that holds them together. The jury will consider the following criteria:
