Culture Capital

Meet the entrepreneurs who have made championing the arts their business— and are fully committed to helping artists in Singapore thrive

- Hashirin Nurin Hashimi

LUCID PROSE

EDMUND WEE

Singapore literature, or Sing Lit in short, has one of its biggest champions in Edmund Wee. Not only is the publisher and CEO of Epigram Books behind the country’s richest literary award, known as the Epigram Books Fiction Prize (EBFP), the trade imprint he started in 2011 (“when the term ‘Sing Lit’ didn’t even exist yet”) has remained true to its premise “to champion homegrown literary talents”—and then some.

“A country needs to have its own stories,” says Wee, and Epigram Books has steadily contributed over 300 books throughout the past 10 years, with upwards of 40 new releases annually. The breakthrough came in 2015 when it published Singaporean graphic novelist Sonny Liew’s The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, a fictional retelling of Singapore’s history, which despite losing its government publishing grant became an international bestseller, and won three Eisner awards, the comics equivalent to the Oscars. “If you ask me, it is Singapore’s most famous novel. We can now talk about Singapore literature on the world stage,” enthuses Wee. The book has since been translated into various languages, including French and Portuguese, as well as traditional and simplified Chinese.