The Singapore Prize is an annual literary award presented to outstanding works produced in Singapore’s four official languages of Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil. A joint initiative by Singapore Book Council and National Arts Council, this year it offers 12 top prizes across three Chinese categories and two English ones.
This year’s competition marked a first: an individual comic or graphic novel category was added. Jeremy Tiang won best English translation for his work on Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon (2022). Two childhood friends speak into the night in order to put aside dark secrets related to their families in the long shadow of Cultural Revolution. Kenfoo’s self-published Cockman (2022), in which an alien chicken finds its way onto Earth as human form and wins over audiences with its humorous tone “with no seriousness or compromise”.
Following Dr Alan HJ Chan’s $1 Million donation to the NUS Singapore History Centre, an Arts and Multimedia category was introduced this year as well as the existing Book Prize. This new prize recognizes historical works that engage deeply with Singapore history while embodying its spirit – this winner will be announced annually and awarded along with Book Prize until 2023.
This year’s ceremony was hosted by Emmy award winning actress Hannah Waddingham and Sterling K. Brown and featured performances by some of today’s hottest artists like Bastille, OneRepublic, Bebe Rexha as well as 15 shortlisted writers, translators, and comic artists who received coveted awards at this prestigious event.
On its 30th anniversary of establishment, this prize honored resonance by emphasizing how books and stories trigger memories, emotions and ideas. Five out of 15 finalists were shortlisted in multiple categories – Clara Chow being nominated in English fiction, nonfiction as well as Chinese poetry categories for her efforts!
AI Singapore has initiated the Online Safety Prize Challenge to bring researchers in AI together in creating multimodal, multilingual, zero-shot models capable of distinguishing between benign and harmful memes within Singapore’s diverse and nuanced digital environment. For more details click here.
After receiving a $1 million donation from Dr Alan HJ Chan to the NUS School of Social Sciences, the former NUS Singapore History Prize has been renamed as the NUS Spirit of Singapore Prize. In its initial three year cycle, awards will be given out for books, multimedia or artistic historical works that address Singaporean history through the lens of equality, diversity, religious harmony, meritocracy pragmatism resilience; with an emphasis on public good. A third category may eventually be introduced recognizing works that address Singapore’s past through these values – thus giving rise to additional categories that focus on public good.