Bumper crop of submissions for Singapore Literature Prize 2016

SINGAPORE — The National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) has announced a bumper crop number of submissions for this year’s Singapore Literature Prize.

Some 235 entries were submitted across the 12 categories (fiction, poetry and non-fiction in English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil), which was 53 more than in 2014, the most submissions in the biennial awards’ 25-year-history.

The biggest increases in submission were in the English non-fiction, Chinese fiction and non-fiction, Malay poetry and Tamil fiction categories.

The shortlist will be announced in mid-May and the winners will be announced at a ceremony on July 14. The winners for each category in the four languages will receive S$10,000 and a plaque.

“We are very excited to see a record-breaking number of works submitted to the SLP, said R Ramachandran, executive director of NBDCS. “We are very happy to see so many new and established authors writing new works across all genres and languages.”