Announcing the 2016 Epigram Books Fiction Prize longlist
SINGAPORE, 13 OCTOBER 2016—Epigram Books is pleased to announce the longlist for its 2016 Fiction Prize.
Ten out of the 50 participants have been longlisted. The authors are (in alphabetical order):
Ning Cai was an award-winning illusionist and escape artist. She has co-authored a book Adventures of 2 Girls based on her nine-month travels around the world with her best friend. Her memoir Who is Magic Babe Ning? was a finalist in the English Non-Fiction category of this year’s Singapore Literature Prize.
Grace Chia is an editor and author of several books, including Every Moving Thing That Lives Shall Be Food, womango, The Cuckoo Conundrum, and Cordelia which was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize for Poetry in 2014. She was the first NAC-NTU Writer-in-Residence from 2011 to 2012.
Warran Kalasegaran graduated from the University of Tokyo with a Master’s degree in Public Policy. He also studied Politics with International Studies at the University of Warwick.
Lau Siew Mei is the author of two novels, Playing Madame Mao and The Dispeller of Worries, and a children’s illustrated chapter book, Yin’s Magic Dragon. Her stories have been broadcast on the BBC World Service and ABC Radio National, and published in literary journals around the world. She was born in Singapore but migrated to Australia in 1994.
Pauline Loh has been writing professionally for more than two decades. She is the author of numerous books, largely non-fiction titles and children’s picture books, including the Little Red Helicopter. She is also a director of a non-profit organisation called Women Empowered for Work and Mothering.
Andrew Ngin lectures on Screenwriting for Film and Television in Temasek Polytechnic for the Diploma in Moving Images. He wrote the script for the first season of Fighting Spiders, and was one of the key writers for two well-known local television series Under One Roof and Growing Up.
Nuraliah Norasid is currently a research associate with an organisation that looks largely into socio-religious issues in Singapore. She has a Ph.D in English Literature and Creative Writing from Nanyang Technological University. Her writing has been anthologised and has appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore.
O Thiam Chin won last year’s prize with his first novel Now That It’s Over. He is the author of five short story collections, including Love, Or Something Like Love which was shortlisted for the 2014 Singapore Literature Prize for English Fiction. He was an honorary fellow of the Iowa International Writing Program in 2010 and an NAC Young Artist winner in 2012.
Tham Cheng-E is an architect who also writes about the special needs community for the online magazine Special Seeds during his spare time, and maintains a family blog on parenting and Down syndrome.
Jeremy Tiang is the author of the short story collection It Never Rains on National Day, which was shortlisted in the English Fiction category of this year’s Singapore Literature Prize. He has also translated more than ten books from Chinese, including novels by You Jin and Yeng Pway Ngon.
“We are very encouraged by this year’s entries,” said Edmund Wee, Publisher and CEO of Epigram Books. “The longlist is just as diverse in genre as it is commendable in quality. We will no doubt have a tough time picking out the shortlist.”
The shortlist will be released early next month and the winner will be announced at an award ceremony and gala dinner to be held at the Pan Pacific Singapore on November 24, 2016.
The judges for this year’s prize are Philip Holden, professor at the Department of English Language and Literature in the National University of Singapore; Haresh Sharma, a 2015 Cultural Medallion winner and resident playwright for The Necessary Stage; Constance Singam, author, activist and former president of the women’s rights group AWARE, and Wee himself.
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