Programmes

Singapore Writers Festival

Event Details

SINGAPORE WRITERS FESTIVAL 2020: OPENING NIGHT

LIVE ON 30 OCT 2020, FRI, 8PM.

The Singapore Writers Festival started in 1986 as a biennial festival. Now held yearly, the festival is a much anticipated event on the cultural calendar, presenting the world’s major literary talents to Singaporeans while shining a spotlight on home grown and Southeast Asian creative talents. Over the years, the Festival has become an exciting meeting point of writers, academics and thinkers in a choice spread of panel discussions, workshops, lectures and performances in 10 days. It has hosted literati the likes of Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian, Whitbread Book Awards First Novel winner Tash Aw, British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Nebula winner Neil Gaiman and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham.

The Singapore Writers Festival is one of the few multi-lingual literary festivals in the world, celebrating the written and spoken word in Singapore’s official languages – English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil. This year, the Festival will be housed in the Civic District amongst historic buildings such as The Arts House, The National Gallery and the Asian Civilisations Museum.

The Arts House has been a key programming partner of the festival since 2012.

For full festival line-up, click here.

Get your digital festival passes here.

SINGAPORE WRITERS FESTIVAL LITERARY PIONEER 2020

P. Krishnan

P. Krishnan, is a prolific writer, poet, playwright, and radio producer-presenter, who wrote under the pseudonym “Puthumaithasan". A founding member of the Singapore Tamil Writers Association, he was a writer known for his works that depict the aspirations, lifestyles and experiences of the Tamil community in Singapore. He also enjoyed a distinguished career working for Radio and Television of Singapore. He has received many prestigious awards, both local and international, in recognition of his contribution to Tamil literature and Tamil language, including the Cultural Medallion in 2008.

Rama Kannabiran

Rama Kannabiran is Singapore's foremost Tamil language short-story writer and novelist and was instrumental in putting the language on the island's literary map. His notable worksinclude Irupathainthu Aandukal (Twenty-Five Years, 1980), Peedam (Seat Power, 1988) and Gypsies (2007). He has received the Thamizhavel award, the South East Asia Writers Award, and the Cultural Medallion.

Singai Ma Ilangkannan

M. Balakrishnan, also known by his pen name Ma Ilangkannan, is a well-respected author of Tamil-language fiction in Singapore. He has published several novels and short story collections that have depicted the lives of the Tamil migrant working class in Singapore through the decades. Among the awards he has received are the S.E.A. Write Award (1982), the Thamizhavel Award (Gold) (1999), and the Singapore Literature Prize (2004). In 2005, Balakrishnan received the Cultural Medallion for his contributions to literature in Singapore.