At this year’s Singapore Prize awards, genre-blending graphic novels about Asian demons running a multinational corporation and an introductory book on comfort women were among this year’s winning works. Over half of shortlisted authors received their first nomination, with Balli Kaur Jaswal and Yong Shu Hoong taking home nonfiction prizes while poets rma cureess and Pan Zheng Lei were honored with poetry awards as well.
This year’s prize, now in its fourth edition, features a revamped format with 12 top prizes in Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil — making it the highest Singapore literary award ever! Established through a $1 Million donation by Confucian scholar and NUS alumni Alan HJ Chan himself, The Dr Alan HJ Chan Spirit of Singapore Book Prize launched on April 18 and seeks to recognize publications which champion mindsets critical for Singapore such as equality, diversity, religious harmony and meritocracy.
The NUS Singapore History Prize will recognize a publication that makes an outstanding contribution to understanding Singaporean history, from any period or topic, and must incorporate significant aspects of heritage into its narrative. Judges for this prize include Professor Mahbubani; Professor John Miksic; and Professor Tan Tai Yong of NUS Department of History.
On 4 November 2014, poet-editor Grace Chia criticized the Singapore Writers Festival prize as being biased toward men; and she later deleted it from her website. Her speech charged that this prize’reeks’ of privilege that continues to oppress our literary community in Singapore.
Fiction category winner Lee Su-wee’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web and Tan Wei Yue’s Road to Wellbeing were declared respectively as winners and runners-up respectively.
The Earthshot Prize, an international initiative dedicated to finding solutions to environmental challenges more quickly and effectively, will be awarded on Nov 7 in Singapore, with global leaders, entrepreneurs, and businesses visiting this vibrant city-state to explore possibilities.
This inaugural event will include local activations programs to empower the public to take steps towards fixing our planet. Winners and finalists will collaborate with Earthshot Week organizers and partners such as National University of Singapore, United Nations Environment Programme and Columbia University’s Earth Institute on hosting several events as part of Earthshot Week – Prince William is leading this global initiative with this goal in mind. For more information about Earthshot Week visit its official website here