Singapore Writers Festival 2024: Why book reviews and Colombian women’s literature matter

SINGAPORE – Reviews and opinions generate buzz around books, so the National Arts Council (NAC) should consider commissioning book reviews of Singapore works when they are published. 

Arguing that this is a cost-effective way to help boost book sales, writer and editor Ruby Thiagarajan made the suggestion at the Singapore Writers Festival 2024 (SWF) on Nov 13.

But her proposal also came with a caveat in an industry of precarious margins: The arts authority must take care not to tie publishers’ and authors’ future funding to reviews or risk reviewers feeling they have a duty to hold back.

As SWF approaches its second and final weekend, Thiagarajan – along with fellow writers and reviewers Jonathan Chan and Shawn Hoo, who reports for The Straits Times – held court in a jovial mid-week panel at The Arts House. 

Titled Cultivating A Literary Ecosystem Through Criticism, they homed in readily on an oft-overlooked part of any healthy literary ecosystem.

Moderator Daryl Lim broached head-on a taboo of reviewing in a small community like Singapore’s when his opening salvo got panellists to publicly declare works they hate. 

Amid the trio’s substantive responses, all said they were acutely aware of the need to balance a love for the community with constructive criticism. A dearth of critical voices means each negative word might upset feelings or, worse, tank sales – pressure that can inhibit more open dialogue. 

Hoo, who has been confronted by artists he has reviewed, reminded the audience that “hate also comes from a place of love”. To create a critical mass of reviewers, universities could include more “public-facing” literary criticism in their English degrees, he proposed.  

Chan diagnosed a prestige problem, pointing out that there is no equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in the Singapore Literature Prize, an underestimation of an art form that allows books a chance to “live again”.

Thiagarajan – whose Mynah Magazine, making a comeback in 2025, makes it a point to pay contributors – said quality and diverse voices would not be able to surface without commensurate payment.

Today, even established journals like the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore expect reviewers to write for free. “As a publisher, I can say that free work is never the best work,” she said.

An earlier Conversation On Colombian Women’s Literature with author Pilar Quintana, organised by the country’s embassy, focused on the problem of representation in the South American nation.

Quintana is the editor-in-chief of the Colombian Women Writers Library, an initiative supported by the Colombian ministry of foreign affairs. It has scoured writing in Colombia and published works by women authors from the 17th century to the present day to re-insert women writers into the national consciousness.

An acclaimed writer herself – Quintana’s La Perra (2003) won several awards – she spoke of how the project was important to her personally as a search for heritage.

On why women have largely been ignored in her home country, she said the same opportunities accorded to men simply have not been historically granted to women. Older published works by women in Colombia would often come with an apologetic prologue from a male figure along the lines of “she writes, but I promise she is still a good woman”.

Contrary to ideas about “women’s literature”, women do not just write about “love and butterflies”, but also history, politics and war, with the best managing to straddle both sides.

The search for a women’s canon outside the mainstream translates into a broader necessity to look further in the margins for worthwhile literature. “Women write in the margins of a marginalised profession,” she said. “For so long, women have allowed their men to live their dream of writing.”