The winner of the inaugural Singapore Prize will receive a grant of $5 million to scale up his or her solution. Five companies tackling environmental crises will each get PS1 million and other support, including a lithium-ion battery recycler, an underwater drone, and a program to end illegal fishing.
This year’s Singapore Prize received 192 submissions, down 32 from 2020. The judges say the lower number of entries reflects the effect of the pandemic on publishing in the city-state. The shortlist includes novels, memoirs, scholarly work, and graphic novels. In addition to the prize money, each shortlisted book will be published by NUS Press. Readers can also vote online for their favorite shortlisted book, winning Book Vouchers.
The NUS Singapore History Prize 2024 is open to non-fiction and fiction works from around the world, written in English or translated into it. Submissions must focus on Singapore’s history and be published between Jun. 1, 2021 and May 31, 2024. Other creative works with clear historical themes are also eligible.
Professor Rajeev Patke is a historian of modern India and Southeast Asia, specializing in the study of Indian literature and culture, postcolonial theory, and global histories. He is the author of six books and numerous articles in scholarly journals. He has taught at the University of Chicago and Yale-NUS College, where he currently holds the position of Director of the Humanities Division.
Jeremy Tiang won the best English comic or graphic novel category for his work with Chinese author Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon (2022). The story of two childhood friends who confront dark secrets linking their families in Shanghai’s long shadow of the Cultural Revolution was described as “over-the-top audacity and absurdity” by the judges.
Shelly Bryant splits her time between Shanghai and Singapore as a poet, writer, and translator. She has translated for Penguin Books, Epigram, the National Library Board of Singapore, Giramondo Books, and HSRC, as well as editing poetry anthologies with Alban Lake and Celestial Books. She is also the editor of Words Without Borders, a magazine of international literature and translation.
Launched in 1968, TOTO is the first lottery game in the history of Singapore Pools. It has evolved through the years, with a ‘snowballing’ feature introduced in 1981 that allows prize amounts to increase if no winners are drawn. In 1998, the TOTO Premium Prize was raised to $2 million, and in 2018 the prize amount was raised to its current level of $2.3 million. There is a one-in-eleven chance of winning the prize in each Singapore Pools draw. Click here to find out more.