Our Story
Epigram is a Singaporean independent publisher offering a full suite of publishing solutions.
Founded in 1991 as a communications design firm, Epigram found our place in publication design when our founder Edmund Wee was conferred Singapore's most prestigious design honour—Designer of the Year in the 2008 President's Design Award. Over the years, we’ve had the honour to work with countless outstanding local talents.
Having put out more than 150 commissioned projects, we started our trade imprint, Epigram Books, in 2011, to provide a platform for local creatives and champion homegrown literary talents. Currently, Epigram Books publishes fiction — novels, short stories, plays, graphic novels, chapter books, picture books — and non-fiction books from Singapore and Southeast Asia.
“If I had to give a one-word answer to why I publish, it would be ‘pleasure’.”
To date, we are best known for our award-winning titles such as Eisner Award-winning graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye; the middle-grade series The Diary of Amos Lee (which has sold more than 240,000 copies worldwide); novels such as State of Emergency by Jeremy Tiang, and short story collection Ministry of Moral Panic by Amanda Lee Koe, both of which have won the Singapore Literature Prize for English Fiction.
We also initiated the Epigram Books Fiction Prize in 2015 to uncover the next great Singaporean novel. In 2020, the Prize was expanded to include works from Southeast Asia.
Check out Epigram's latest catalogue here: July – December 2018 (PDF)
In 2016, we started LocalBooks.sg, a one-stop online bookstore specialising in Singaporean titles – books written by Singaporean authors, books published in Singapore or books about Singapore – from classics to the latest novels, memoirs to recipe books, graphic novels to plays and poetry. With thousands of titles, we aspire to bring Singaporean titles to a wider audience, giving everyone a chance to grow with stories from home.
In 2017, we started Epigram Books UK, as part of our push to bring literature from Singapore and Southeast Asia to the UK and beyond (and get a title into the Book Prize). In 2019, we collaborated with Singaporean coffee chain huggs coffee to come up with the concept store Huggs-Epigram Coffee Bookshop. Like LocalBooks.sg, the Huggs-Epigram Coffee Bookshop features Singaporean titles. It also offers a menu of local-style coffee brews and artisanal coffees, as well as a selection of cakes, muffins, pastries and wraps.