| Singapore | 29 Oct 2015 | Asia Samachar |
Singapore-born Balli Kaur Jaswal is one of the four writers shortlisted for the inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize which carries a prize of S$20,000 and a publishing contract with the publisher.
Balli is author of Inheritance, said to be the first English-language novel about Singapore’s Punjabi-Sikh diaspora.
The other candidates are Wong Souk Yee, O Thiam Chin and Sebastian Spore.
The winner of prize, claimed to be the richest literary award in Singapore, will be announced at an award dinner on 5 Nov 2015.
Balli, 32, was named “Best Young Australian Novelist” in 2014 by Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald for Inheritance.
She grew up in Singapore, Japan, Russia and the Philippines. Last year, she was the national writer-in-residence at Nanyang Technological University. She recently moved to Istanbul, Turkey to join the faculty at an international school.
In an interview in August, Balli said she was working on writing a novel titled Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows.
“I’ve finished a draft and I’m in the middle stages of editing it. The novel is about a group of Punjabi widows in London who start an erotic storytelling club,” she said in a recent interview with Scroll.
SEE ALSO: Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
Epigram Books describes itself as a Singapore-based independent publisher which puts together well-designed and thought-provoking titles.
Its book prize is to be given to a Singaporean, Singapore permanent resident or Singapore-born author for the best manuscript of a full-length, original and unpublished novel written in the English language, according to information on the company’s website.
For the sake of an unbiased assessment, the scripts will be judged blind and the titles will not be released to the public until our award ceremony, according to the publisher.
The submissions selected were judged based on the use of language, storyline, plot structure, character development and effective dialogue.
The shortlisted manuscripts demonstrate excellent and varied ways of fulfilling these criteria, according to information on the prize website.
[ASIA SAMACHAR is an online newspaper for Sikhs in Southeast Asia and surrounding countries. We have a Facebook page, do give it a LIKE. Follow us on Twitter. Visit our website: www.asiasamachar.com]
RELATED STORY:
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows (Asia Samachar, 13 Aug 2015)
Jashpreet launches book on nurturing babies with loving touch (Asia Samachar, 25 Sept 2015)
Harbans’ second edition of engineering, construction contracts book (Asia Samachar, 1 May 2015)
