Epigram Books Blog

So we just had our first big event of the year: the first sales conference of the year, which we called Stories About Stories. 

It's called Stories About Stories because 12 authors turned up to tell stories about what it took to write their stories, all of which will be out in the first half of the year. 

Who were the authors telling their stories too? Members of the various book retailers as well as members of the media. 

But enough yakkin' — here's a quick look at what happened. 

The latest edition of the Secrets of Singapore series, called Secrets of Singapore: Botanic Gardens is out now! But what went into the making of the book? Here, Monica Lim, who co-wrote the book with her daughter, Lesley-Anne, spills the beans.

Author Sebastian Sim's second English novel, The Riot Act is a dark comedy set in the aftermath of the 2013 Little India riot, and follows three women as they become wrapped up in a web of truth, deception and political connections over the incident — presented in Sebastian’s trademark comedic vein. The manuscript won the 2017 Epigram Books Fiction Prize.

 Before Mr. S. Rajaratnam became one of the founding fathers of Singapore (he was the country's first and longest-serving Foreign Minister) and wrote the National Pledge, he was writing short stories and radio plays — all of which have been collected here in this engaging anthology. 

As a journalist, Simon Vincent has told various stories of life in Singapore; but in his book, The Naysayer’s Book Club, he gets 26 Singaporeans to tell their own stories of their lives in Singapore.

Here at Stories About Stories, authors talk about what goes on behind their latest creation. This week, we're talking to Lau Siew Mei, whose new book The Last Immigrant is finally out! In The Last Immigrant, Ismael, a transplanted Singaporean, lives on a bucolic suburban Brisbane street. His job is to decide whether asylum-seekers get to stay in the country, a dilemma that never fails to remind him of his own immigrant status.

This time around, we have Darren C. Ong, whose children's book, The Trampolines that Nadia Built, has just been released.

He's not your regular author. In fact, he's an associate professor of mathematics at Xiamen University Malaysia. His day job involves doing research on mathematical physics, and how quantum particles behave in environments with an unusual structure.

We got him to spill the beans on trampolines, dreams and lessons learnt. 

Ken Kwek may be better known as a film director, but the truth is that he has been writing stories for a long time — whether it's writing movie scripts or screenplays or plays. 
With Timothy and The Phubbers, Ken Kwek makes his official debut as an author. Like the stories he's told on the big screen, the characters in his books are just as colourful.