NTU English graduate's novel shortlisted for Fiction Prize

NTU English graduate Nisha Mehraj's manuscript for a novel was shortlisted for the 2022 Epigram Books Fiction Prize. 

We Do Not Make Love Here shares the story of a family saga told from the perspectives of four ordinary Indian Singaporeans.

The Epigram Books Fiction Prize is an award for unpublished English novels. The 2022 winner - Malaysian Karina Robles Bahrin - won $25,000, while the other finalists, including Nisha, received $5,000.

One of the judges, Intercultural Theatre Institute co-founder T. Sasitharan, hailed Nisha's novel as "a tightly focused story with an intense spotlight on the deep subjectivities of seemingly everyday ordinary people... found throughout is a strong, visceral presence of women - as daughters, wives, mothers, girlfriends and workers - which serves to knit the story together".

The other judges were Shirley Chew, a Nanyang Technological University (NTU) professor; Amir Muhammad, founder of publisher Buku Fixi in Malaysia; the Association of Women for Action and Research then-president Margaret Thomas; and Epigram Books publisher Edmund Wee.

Read more: https://www.straitstimes.com/life/arts/ex-schoolteacher-nisha-mehraj-explores-lives-of-ordinary-singaporeans-in-first-novel