Epigram Books is an independent publishing company in Singapore. It publishes works of Singapore-based writers, poets and playwrights.

History

Epigram was originally set up in 1991 by Edmund Wee as a design agency. Epigram began the publishing and designing of annual reports before expanding its portfolio into other design directions such as wayfinding, corporate logo branding, and graphic design. The stable of clients under the company includes

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and

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. Epigram has won international awards for their designs of annual reports, including the Hong Kong Design Awards and the Graphis Gold Award for Annual Reports.Phan, M. (2008, 3 Mar) Designed to send the message across. The Business Times. Retrieved from http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/biztimes20080303-1.2.18.1.aspx They are the first company in the world to win the Grand Prix award at the Red Dot consecutively. They then received commissions for commemorative books for agencies such as National Trades Union Congress and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Epigram continues to provide services such as art direction, publication design, branding, signage and way-finding, and editorial development. The company Epigram Books, the publishing arm of Epigram set up in 1999, published its first book with mountaineer David Lim’s ''Mountain to Climb: The Quest for Everest and Beyond''. Epigram Books bore the design and printing costs of the book and sold 5000 copies. Epigram Books was incorporated as a separate entity from the parent company in July 2011. In 2015, Epigram Books launched a fiction prize, the Epigram Books Fiction Prize, with an award of $20,000, the richest literary award in Singapore. The first edition was won by O Thiam Chin. In January 2021, Epigram Books which set up its London arm in November 2016, announced it would stop publishing in the United Kingdom in order to shore up its Singapore business amid the COVID-19 slowdown.

Notable publications and reception

Epigram Books have published a series of cookbooks, under the Heritage Cookbook series. In 2010, they published ''There’s No Carrot in Carrot Cake'', a guide book to Singapore’s

street food Street food is ready-to-eat food or drinks sold by a hawker, or vendor, in a street or at other public places, such as markets or fairs. It is often sold from a portable food booth, food cart, or food truck and is meant for immediate consumption ...

(or hawker food in colloquial terms). The book sparked off a debate in the media about the need for a culinary school to preserve Singapore’s food heritage. A short story, ''Moving Forward,'' included in the compilation of Andrew Tan’s ''Monsters, Miracles & Mayonnaise'' was nominated for an

Eisner Award The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books, sometimes referred to as the comics industry's equivalent of the Academy Awards. They are named in ...

for Best Short Story in 2013. ''Monsters, Miracles & Mayonnaise'' is one of the three graphic novels that was published by the company in 2012. Epigram Books is also the first Singapore publishing house to have a comic book nominated for this prize. Another graphic novel, ''Ten Sticks and One Rice'' by Oh Yong Hwee and Koh Hong Teng won an International MANGA Award (Bronze) in 2014. Other than publishing books by debut authors, Epigram Books has also taken to republish books that are out-of-print Singapore classics, such as Jean Tay’s B''oom and Everything but the Brain'' and Goh Poh Seng’s ''The Immolation''.Oon, C. (2013, 26 Feb). Local book’s next chapter. The Straits Times. The company has also launched the Cultural Medallion series, where non-English works of Literature award recipients are translated into English. Some of the works include Singai M. Elangkannan’s ''Flowers at Dawn'', Suratman Markasan’s ''Penghulu'' and Wong Meng Voon’s ''Under the Bed, Confusion''. In 2016, Epigram Books was shortlisted for the Bologna Prize for the Best Children’s Publishers of the Year at the 53rd Bologna Children’s Book Fair. The award rewards creative, innovative publishers based on “the editorial projects, professional skills and intellectual qualities of work produced by publishing houses all over the world”. In the same year, Epigram Books won four out of eight prizes at the Singapore Book Awards, including Book Of The Year for

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's ''The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye'' and Best Fiction Title for

Amanda Lee Koe Amanda Lee Koe (born ) is a Singapore-born, New York-based novelist and short story writer. She is best known for her debut novel ''Delayed Rays of A Star'', published by Doubleday (publisher), Doubleday in July 2019, and for being the youngest ...

's ''Ministry of Moral Panic''.

Epigram Books Fiction Prize

Launched in 2015, the Epigram Books Fiction Prize has been awarded annually to the best original and unpublished novel in the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

written by a Singaporean citizen, Singapore permanent resident, or Singapore-born writer. The prize remains Singapore's richest literary prize, with the highest prize being $25,000 SGD. The inaugural 2015 Prize was won by

O Thiam Chin O Thiam Chin (born 8 December 1977) is a Singaporean author. Many of his stories explore themes of love, heartbreak, alienation and gay male sexuality. Biography O was born into a family of Mandarin-speaking hawkers. He studied at Ang Mo Kio ...

for his novel ''Now That It's Over'', while the 2016 Prize was won by Nuraliah Norasid for her novel ''The Gatekeeper'' and the 2017 Prize to Sebastian Sim for ''The Riot Act''. In 2018, Yeoh Jo-Ann's ''Impractical Uses Of Cake'' won, and it was announced that from 2019, the Prize prize will be open to writers from other

ASEAN ASEAN ( , ), officially the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, is a political and economic union of 10 member states in Southeast Asia, which promotes intergovernmental cooperation and facilitates economic, political, security, militar ...

countries, not only Singapore. In 2020, Malaysian author Joshua Kam won, with his book, ''How the Man in Green Saved Pahang, and Possibly the World''. In January 2021, two writers – Meihan Boey and Sebastian Sim – were named joint winners of the 2021 Prize. This is the first time two joint winners have won the Prize and the first time an author has won it twice.

Selected works

2015

Winner *''Now That It's Over'',

(2016) Finalists *'' Death of a Perm Sec'', Wong Souk Yee (2016) *''Let's Give It Up for Gimme Lao!'', Sebastian Sim (2016) *''Sugarbread'',

Balli Kaur Jaswal Balli Kaur Jaswal is a Singaporean novelist, having family roots in Punjab. Her first novel ''Inheritance'' won the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelist Award in 2014, and was adapted for a film presented at the 2017 Singapore Inte ...

(2016)

2016

Winner *''The Gatekeeper'', Nuraliah Norasid (2017) Finalists *''Surrogate Protocol'', Tham Cheng-E (2017) *''State of Emergency'',

Jeremy Tiang Jeremy Tiang (born 17 January 1977) is a Singaporean writer, translator and playwright based in New York City. Tiang won the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize for English fiction for his debut novel, ''State of Emergency'', published in 2017. Car ...

(2017) *''Fox Fire Girl'',

(2017)

2017

Winner *''The Riot Act'', Sebastian Sim (2018) Finalists *''Sofia & The Utopia Machine'', Judith Huang (2018) *''Nimita's Place'', Akshita Nanda (2018) *''9th of August'', Andre Yeo (2018)

2018

Winner *''Impractical Uses of Cake'', Yeoh Jo-Ann (2019) Finalists *''The Movie That No One Saw'',

May Seah May is the fifth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and is the third of seven months to have a length of 31 days. May is a month of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. Therefore, Ma ...

(2019) *''The Lights That Find Us'', Anittha Thanabalan (2019) *''Beng Beng Revolution'', Lu Huiyi (2019) 2019 Winner * ''How The Man In Green Saved Pahang, And Possibly The World'', Joshua Kam (2020) Finalists *''The Java Enigma,'' Erni Salleh (2020) *''A Good True Thai'', Sunisa Manning (2020) *''The Witch Doctor’s Daughter'', Kathrina Mohd Daud (2020) 2020 Winners (Joint) *''The Formidable Miss Cassidy'', Meihan Boey (2021) *''And The Award Goes to Sally Bong,'' Sebastian Sim (2021) Finalists *''Lovelier, Lonelier'', Daryl Qilin Yam (2021) *''Kopi, Puffs & Dreams'', Pallavi Gopinath Aney (2021) *''Blue Sky Mansion'', H.Y. Yeang (2021) 2021 Winner *''The Accidental Malay'', Karina Robles Bahrin (2022) Finalists *''Every School a Good School'', Ng Ziqin (2022) *''We Do Not Make Love Here'', Nisha Mehraj (2022) *''Lost Treasure of the Lanfang Republic'', Tan Lip Hong (2022)

References

{{Authority control Book publishing companies of Singapore Publishing companies established in 2011