Singaporean Sarah Ang wins New Voices Award at Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize
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As part of the prize, Singaporean writer Sarah Ang, who won for her novel-in-progress Whale Song, will receive a year-long mentorship to help develop her novel into a full first draft.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF SARAH ANG
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SINGAPORE – Singaporean Sarah Ang’s novel-in-progress Whale Song has won the New Voices Award at the 2025 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. Her story follows a high-flying Singaporean strategy consultant on a whale research expedition after ending a toxic relationship.
The 26-year-old, who says her win was “surreal and deeply affirming”, tells The Straits Times: “Wilbur Smith was one of my dad’s favourite authors when he was a boy. Writing and publishing a novel has been a childhood dream of mine for as long as I can remember. Ever since I could pick up a pen, I’ve been scribbling stories on my own.”
The prize is given to an unpublished writer from around the world. The London-based Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation, which organises the prize, states on its website that the prize is judged “based on the strength of the idea, writing style, characterisation and – that magic ingredient – ‘unputdownability’” and is aimed at unearthing “fresh literary talent”.
As part of the prize, Ang will receive mentorship and editorial guidance from editor Martin Fletcher. He has worked on the novels of the late British-South African novelist Smith since 2015, and co-wrote Smith’s autobiography On Leopard Rock (2018). This year-long mentorship will help Ang develop her novel into a full first draft.
Ang previously received the £1,000 Author of Tomorrow prize at the 2020 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize – open to writers between ages 16 to 21 – for her post-apocalyptic short story Pearl Diving, about a mysterious disease that wrecks the world.
On the inspiration behind her novel-in-progress, the civil servant says: “When I was 12, I saw whales for the first time on a family road trip to New Zealand. Their vast, silent bodies breaking the water’s surface carried a quiet grace that calmed something restless within me.
“Growing up in Singapore, it often feels like the relentless pursuit of excellence is an unspoken expectation etched into daily life. The idea for Whale Song was born from this tension – the yearning to break free from the grip of control and achievement to find healing in wild spaces where the noise of ambition fades.”
The 2025 New Voices Award cohort includes four other writers who are Brazilian, British and Irish.
