As part of Singapore’s 50th Anniversary celebrations in 2014, an inaugural Singapore prize was introduced with an aim of encouraging reading and helping foster national identity. Administered by NUS Department of History, this prize recognizes significant publications about its history. Winners receive S$50,000 each.
Former Singapore diplomat Kishore Mahbubani chairs the five-member panel responsible for awarding this prize every three years, and stresses its increasing significance due to Singapore’s key challenge today: developing a sense of common identity that builds on a shared history.
The NUS Singapore History Prize welcomes non-fiction and fiction work published worldwide that features clear historical themes related to Singapore. Submissions must have been published between June 1, 2024, and May 31, 2024, while winners are revealed during a ceremony in November.
NUS has joined forces with Temasek Trust, investment platform GenZero and conservation group United for Wildlife in sponsoring this award. Each sponsor hopes their resources, networks and expertise can assist the prize in realising its goal of scaling innovative environmental solutions.
As part of its award, NUS has established a Prize Book to showcase award-winning individuals and organisations. One such profile features Muhammad Dinie from Institute of Technical Education College Central who led an appreciation project for Town Council cleaners during Covid-19 pandemic by providing food and groceries directly to residents within Ang Mo Kio estate.
Others projects that were honored included: an innovative way of testing water for Ebola; a research team led by Singaporean scientists testing artificial intelligence’s health effects on children and vulnerable groups; and a group that created an anti-human trafficking system. NUS plans on expanding this prize further into different categories like film or comic books in future.
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The Singapore Literature Prize was launched in 2014 to honour Singaporean authors’ works written in Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil languages. Fiction competed against poetry for top honors in each language category until one winner emerged – they will be celebrated during a ceremony scheduled for November.
Clara Chow is the first writer in prize history to be shortlisted in two categories and two languages simultaneously – English fiction and Chinese poetic forms – making her also the youngest author shortlisted in both categories.
Shelly Bryant spends her year traveling between Shanghai and Singapore where she works as a poet, translator, editor. Her translations from Chinese have appeared in Penguin Books, Epigram Publishing, HSRC and Giramondo Books; her poetry anthologies with Ilya Kaminsky have appeared with Alban Lake and Celestial Books respectively; Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls translation was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2012! Additionally she has received grants from Arts Council of Singapore as well as publishing with multiple Singaporean publishers.