The prize book is an annual publication that profiles the most outstanding pre-tertiary students who have demonstrated great care for others in the community. It aims to inspire young Singaporeans with the idea that Harvard is an attainable institution of higher learning and to connect them with the Harvard community in Singapore.
This year’s top winner in the Student Category is Muhammad Dinie from ITE College Central, who organised a group to distribute packed food and groceries to Town Council cleaners during the Covid-19 pandemic. He and his team also visited Ang Mo Kio estates to give out thank-you cards to cleaners who were working during the crisis.
In the non-fiction category, the judges praised Reviving Qixi: The Forgotten Seven Sisters Festival by Lynn Wong Yuqing and Lee Kok Leong for shedding light on a Chinese cultural heritage festival. They also lauded Theatres of Memory: Industrial Heritage of 20th Century Singapore by Loh Kah Seng, Alex Tan Tiong Hee, Koh Keng We, and Juria Toramae for its insights into the under-studied labour and industrial history of Singapore.
The judges for the 2024 NUS Singapore History Prize, chaired by historian Kian Phang, selected Hidayah Amin’s Leluhur: The Story of Kampong Gelam for its synthesis of 25 years of archaeological research into Singapore’s 14th-century port. The judges said that Amin’s book “shows how Singapore forged its identity as a trading city by connecting the past to the present”.
For the second time in the history of the prize, the jury awarded two books in the Readers’ Favourite category. First-time author Shelly Bryant, a poet and translator who divides her time between Shanghai and Singapore, was named Readers’ Favourite for Magic Babe Ning Cai, a story about a Singaporean grandmother who reclaims her past through storytelling. Her translation of You Jin’s Northern Girls won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012. She has also translated work from the Chinese for Penguin Books, Epigram, HSRC, and Giramondo, and edited poetry anthologies with Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris.
The prize winners were announced at an extravagant ceremony at The Theatre Mediacorp, with the prince looking coordinated with his event host Hannah Waddingham in a dark green velour suit and dickie bow. He gave a short speech to congratulate the winners, which included violinists Dmytro Udovychenko, Anna Agafia Egholm, and Angela Sin Ying Chan.
A total of 105 films from 45 countries were showcased at the Asia Film Festival, which ran from November 9 to November 14. The festival honored Singaporean visual arts center Objectifs with the Lifetime Achievement Award and Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was recently freed from a 14-year travel ban, with the Cinema Honorary Award. The festival also reported record attendance figures, with 80% of the audience coming from Asia. The winners of the prizes were rewarded with cash and concert engagements. Encore screenings of the winning films will be held at the end of December.
