The winners of the 2023 singapore prize were celebrated at a glittering ceremony held in Mediacorp Theatre. The prince wore a sharp dark green velour suit with a dickie bow to match the thick green carpet, and the ceremony’s host, Hannah Waddingham, looked stunning in her long black sparkling ball gown with a matching green sash.
The prize celebrates Singapore’s best writers across the English, Chinese and Tamil categories. Clara Chow clinched the top spot in both the English fiction and English creative nonfiction categories, making her the first writer in program history to win both awards. Other notable winners include poetry writers alllkunilaa (Azhagunila) and innnpaa (Inbha), and the nonagenarian Wang Gungwu, who won the Chinese nonfiction category for Snow at 5 pm: Translations of an Insignificant Japanese Poet.
This year’s prize was presented to the winners by Prince William, who is in town for the United for Wildlife global summit. The event features representatives from governments, law enforcement and corporations who are working together to combat the $20 billion global trade in illegal wildlife products. The prince, who is a keen sportsman, will also try his hand at dragon boating and meet Singaporeans to learn about their work to protect and restore the planet.
Close to S$2.3 million was awarded to 121 Asian and SEA Games medallists at the Major Games Award Programme (MAP) presentation at Timbre+ One-North on Wednesday. Sprint queen Shanti Pereira was the biggest winner, taking home S$315,000 for her two gold and one silver medal in the women’s 200m at this year’s Hangzhou games. She will donate the money to her national sports associations, as is customary.
The MAP was introduced in 2014 in support of SG50 programs to mark the nation’s 50th anniversary, and is the first Singapore prize to be devoted to the country’s history. The prize is administered by the NUS Department of History and is awarded every three years.
NUS historian and prize panel chairman Kishore Mahbubani had mooted the idea of a Singapore history prize in an opinion column in The Straits Times in April 2014. He said that while it was easy to find examples of philanthropists giving away cash for their communities, he thought there was no award that recognised books which made an impact on people’s understanding of their past.
In the inaugural edition of the prize, books were shortlisted by a panel of six judges and the public was invited to vote for their favourite. The winning books in each of the three categories were selected by the prize panel, and the consumer choice winners were Ali bin Salim (fiction), Daryl Qilin Yam (fiction), Pan Zheng Lei (Pan Zheng Lei) and rma cureess (Rama Suresh). The list of the finalists can be found here. The winners in the other categories will be announced next week. The full list of shortlisted titles, categorized by language, can be found here. This is Publishing Perspectives’ 131st awards-related report in our series of daily reports since our start on January 3. Click here for more Singapore prize-related coverage.