Housewife Tamilselvi Rajarajan, 52, was heartbroken when her friend, a migrant worker in Singapore, struggled with being stuck in a dormitory during the pandemic.

Her anguish became the point of departure for Window, which won first prize in the Tamil Short Story category of the 15th Golden Point Awards, a creative writing competition for poetry and short stories in Singapore's four official languages.

There were 38 winners at the awards ceremony held at The Arts House last Saturday. National Arts Council chairman Goh Swee Chen gave out the prizes.

This year's competition, organised by Arts House Limited, drew close to 2,000 entries, the highest number since it started in 1993. Only writers who, at the time of application, have yet to publish a solo work in the genre they are competing in are allowed to take part.

Mrs Rajarajan says: "I always had an interest in writing, but never really pursued it. But as my children grew up, I had more time to write and used it as a creative outlet."

She says she would probably use the prize money to publish her writings. First-prize winners get $7,000 in cash, in addition to a certificate and trophy. There are cash prizes for the other winners.

Ms Divya Govindarajan's short story, Handwriting, won first prize in the English Short Story category. Written from a third-person perspective, it revolves around the things people inherit and how they help to shape identities.

Handwriting is the 35-year-old supply chain professional's first story. She believes that through the pandemic, people have come to identify a sixth stage of grief in addition to denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance: meaning.

The story's protagonist processes her father's death by traversing different worlds, portrayed in the language of dreams. Along the way, she discovers meaning and how it has changed her.

Writer Clara Chow, who was on the judging panel, says the story has a "graceful economy that accomplished more than some longer pieces".

Ms Govindarajan says: "This story came to me almost like a creative birth: my water broke and I must write." She hopes to use the prize money to attend creative writing workshops and start a writing practice.

The first prize in the English Poetry category went to Mr Jerome Lim's poetic sequence - Hot Wheel Summer, I'm Still Fifteen Doing Online Career Quizzes, Breakfast At Bone Beach, Anthropogenic and Plan For Stupid Hot Days.

Mr Lim, 27, a literature teacher at a secondary school, is also the managing editor of poetry.sg, an online archive of Singapore poetry and criticism. He says his sequence of poems was "born out of a growing need to affirm one's capacity for compassion".

In his work, empathy is interrupted by violence, warfare and climate change, which he feels reflects the contemporary challenges of today's world.

He plans to use his prize money to buy presents to motivate the students in his Secondary 4 class. He also hopes to contribute to literary non-profit Sing Lit Station's fund-raiser to support the literary scene here and invest in his own writing practice through poetry workshops and classes.

First prize winners

SHORT STORY

English: Divya Govindarajan, for Handwriting Chinese: Lee Tong Gee, for Gone Missing Malay: Ratna Damayanti Mohamed Taha, for Oar In Hand, Boat In Water Tamil: Tamilselvi Rajarajan, for Window POETRY English: Jerome Lim, for Hot Wheel Summer and other poems Chinese: Lin Yijun, for Spawn and other poems Malay: R. Azmann A. Rahman, for The Raving Of Tales and other poems Tamil: Venkatalakshmi Gopalakrishnan (Banu Suresh), for Joy Of Sickness And Grief Of Recovery and other poems

15th Golden Point Awards