Epigram Books: Championing regional talents

FOR small independent publisher Epigram Books, these past two years have represented a tectonic shift of sorts. It's been scouring for fiction manuscripts not just from Singapore but around the region, and publishing them.

Writers from Myanmar and Laos all the way down to Indonesia and East Timor (Timor-Leste) have been invited to submit their unpublished novels for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize, which awards S$25,000 to the winner and S$5,000 to five other shortlisted writers. Altogether, Epigram is giving out S$50,000, making it one of the richest literary prizes in the region.

Founder Edmund Wee says: "Our neighbours increasingly use English as their second language (both Vietnam and Cambodia have largely switched from French to English). It becomes the language that we can use to understand each other in Asean. And, as it is nearly our first language in Singapore, Epigram is well-placed to be the publisher of South-east Asian writing in English."