Earlier this month, we covered winners in the 2021 Singapore Prize, which honors work in the island nation’s four official languages (Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil). Today, we’re bringing you results from the other key literary prize program on the island: the biennial Singapore Literature Prize. Founded in 1992 and operating in all four languages since 2004, the program focuses on fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. As we previously reported, there are multiple winners in each category. Wong Koi Tet and Sithuraj Ponraj were the biggest winners, winning in the Chinese fiction and English creative nonfiction categories respectively.
This year’s ceremony, held over video call, was a bit unusual: unlike most such ceremonies in the world of publishing, the Singapore prize program aims to be accessible for all. As such, it was a nearly hour-long online event that had to juggle four languages simultaneously. You can check it out here.
The program drew more than 150,000 votes in its consumer choice category, more than double last year’s number of participants. The winners–Ali bin Salim, Daryl Qilin Yam, Pan Zheng Lei, and rma cureess–each receive cash prizes and book-purchase vouchers.
Other notable winners included 91-year-old National University of Singapore professor emeritus Peter Ellinger, who won the award for Down Memory Lane: Peter Ellinger’s Memoirs (2023). In the Chinese fiction category, Yeow Kai Chai won for The Architect of Dreams (2022) and Yong Shu Hoong won the English poetry prize for Anatomy of a Wave (Dakota Books, 2024).
In the history category, NUS Singapore historian Hidayah Amin took home the top prize for Leluhur: Singapore’s Kampong Gelam (1921) for her exploration of the city-state’s economic, political, and social histories in the last 200 years. In the English nonfiction category, NUS professor John Miksic won for Singapore And The Silk Road Of The Sea, 1300-1800 (2002), which synthesises 25 years of archaeological research to present an account of the city’s past.
A housing complex for seniors beat flashier competition to win the World Building Of The Year award at this week’s World Architecture Festival in Amsterdam. The award is the highest in the industry and was given to Kampung Admiralty for its integration of public space, community facilities and over 100 homes for elderly residents.
A string trio has won the Singapore International Violin Competition. Dmytro Udovychenko, Anna Agafia Egholm and Angela Sin Ying Chan received a total of USD $110,000 in prizes, including concert engagements. The competition was sponsored by luxury automotive giant BMW and run by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. The finalists were mentored by an elite panel that included publisher of Vogue Singapore Bettina von Schlippe; vice-president of new business innovation at Conde Nast Asia, Ciara Byrne; and research engineer open innovations at BMW, Stella Clarke.
