Sophia Lee – Bookmarked!

It’s been a couple of years since I interviewed Filipino writers Sophia Lee and Catherine Torres at the Asian Festival of Children’s Content in Singapore, shortly after the results of the Scholastic Asian Book Award were announced. It was a proud moment for the Philippines as Sophie’s novel, “What Things Mean” was named the winner of the Scholastic Asian Book Award, while Catherine’s novel, “Sula’s Voyage,” was one of the finalists.

The Scholastic Asian Book Award aims to recognize excellence in fiction in Asian stories for children, showcase the diversity of literary talent within the region, and to encourage and inspire more books and stories with Asian content. (Read more about it.)

The way Sophia and Catherine described their novels definitely made me long to read them, and I finally got to, as review copies of the books made their way to me a couple of weeks ago!

Continue reading “What Things Mean + Sula’s Voyage”

SINGAPORE — Filipino writers garnered top honors for the 2014 Scholastic Asian Book Award, a biennial search for new Asian children’s stories written in English, announced at the recently concluded Asian Festival of Children’s Content held at the Singapore National Library Building.

Organized by Scholastic and the National Book Development Council of Singapore, the Scholastic Asian Book Award was presented by Singapore Minister of Culture, Community and Youth Lawrence Wong. Filipino writer Sophia Marie Lee was named the grand prize winner for her story “What Things Mean,” and was awarded a cash prize of SGD 10,000 as well as a publishing deal from Scholastic. Another Filipino writer, Catherine Torres, ranked first runner up with her story, “Sula’s Voyage,” while India’s Vivek Bhanot ranked second runner up with his story “Robin and the Case of the Summer Camp Kidnapping.” Runners-up and selected shortlisted entries for the SABA are also considered for publication.

This year’s entries were judged by an international panel of literary experts and renowned authors led by Sayoni Basu (India) as head judge, along with Ken Spillman (Australia), Marjorie Coughlan (Canada), Sarah Odedina (United Kingdom), Wanitcha Sumanat (Thailand).

“We [the judges] were pleasantly surprised with the high quality in the manuscripts submitted this year, which demonstrated greater depth and diversity in their stories, and more sophistication in writing craft as compared to previous years. The universality of the themes will enable all children in Asia and across the world to identify with the stories,” said Sayoni Basu.

Continue reading “Filipino writers win big at Scholastic Asian Book Award”