Dipika for Man Asian Literary Prize

The longlist for this year's Man Asian literary prize has been announced and you can find it here, with more information about the award and each of the authors here in the Press Release.

And one of them - Dipika Mukherjee who was nominated for her unpublished novel Thunder Demons - will be appearing at Readings@Seksan tomorrow! Biggest congratulations to her. (And, in fact to all the authors.)

If her name sounds familiar, it may well be that you have come across the two collections of local short stories she edited : The Merlion and The Hibiscus (Penguin 2002) which brought together Malaysian and Singaporean writers, and Silverfish New Writing 6 (p0ssibly the strongest anthology of the series).

Apparently entries for the competition came from Malaysia but none of them made the cut this time. This, though, is the award to aim for if you have a novel in the works. Next year, then. Next year.