Singapore has a long list of literary awards to honour writers and their works. The country has award categories for its four official languages – English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil – as well as various genres including poetry and drama. These are awarded through a variety of mechanisms and serve to recognise both local talent and excellence.

The awards are presented annually, with each category having a set of judges to determine the winner in each case. The judges are typically experts in the field, and their decision is based on the merits of each entry. The winners are then honoured at a special ceremony, with each recipient receiving a trophy and a cash prize. In addition, the judges also select a ‘jury special mention” and an “audience choice winner.”

This year’s Singapore Prize winners and finalists will be feted at a series of events organised by The Earthshot Foundation. The week-long initiative will see global leaders, businesses and investors convene in Singapore to explore exciting opportunities with the winners and finalists to accelerate solutions and bring about tangible action that will help repair our planet. This event will be accompanied by a number of local activations that the public can join.

Each of the 12 top prizes comes with a cash prize of $3,000 and an engraved trophy. This is the richest pot for a Singapore book prize to date, eclipsing the previous highest of $1 million offered by the Epigram Books Fiction Prize in 2016. In addition, winners will receive a 12-month gift code to audiobook platform Storytel.

The NUS Singapore History Prize was launched in 2014 and is a joint initiative by NUS and the National Library Board (NLB). The aim of the prize is to broaden the definition of history, by encouraging writings on different perspectives, themes, and periods of Singapore’s history. The prize is open to both new and established authors.

This year’s winners were announced at a special awards ceremony at Victoria Theatre, with Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong as guest of honour. Veteran author Suratman Markasan and translator Wang Gungwu became the oldest winners, while eight of the twelve winners are first-time recipients. Tamil writer rma cureess clinched two awards, for the Readers’ Favourite and Tamil Fiction categories.

The inaugural Trusted Media Challenge, which was launched earlier this year, saw participants from around the world work on AI models and solutions to detect audiovisual fake media such as video and audio clips. The winning teams were awarded a cash prize of S$200,000, and will be invited to participate in an international hackathon to further develop their concepts and ideas. To learn more about the competition, visit the Trusted Media Challenge website. The winners of the competition were chosen by a panel of judges, which was composed of industry experts and representatives from NBC Universal, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, LINE, CWT and Google. The judging criteria was based on a rigorous evaluation system, and took into account a range of metrics.