SINGAPORE – Just two years after introducing new award categories for translations and comic books, the biennial Singapore Literature Prize has suspended these for review.

It has also scratched a new debut author category and combined the fiction and creative non-fiction prizes for a consolidated prose award. The overhaul of the prize effectively halves the number of categories authors can vie for from 18 to eight.

Remaining categories are for prose and poetry in the four official languages of English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil.

The streamlining of the Singapore Literature Prize, billed as the country’s most prestigious, was set out in a statement on April 8 by organiser Singapore Book Council (SBC).

The Council also introduced a $20 application fee for each submission, with waivers available on a case-by-case basis.

On a happier note, prize money for each category winner has been increased from $3,000 to $5,000.

It is the first cash increase since Covid-19, when the prize money was dramatically slashed from $10,000 to $3,000.

The Council said in a statement: “These changes are part of our effort to ensure that the prize continues to be credible, competitive and sustainable amid rising operational costs and a challenging landscape. While the value of a work has never been pegged to prize money, we recognise the importance of monetary recognition.”

The review of the translation and comics/graphic novels categories are in part due to the difficulty of compiling a competitive pool of entries, “based on observations from the previous edition”.

In the interim, they will not qualify in the prose and fiction categories for the 2026 edition.