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History
Epigram, set up in 1991 by Edmund Wee as a design agency, started off with only one employee. Epigram started with the publishing and designing of annual reports. The stable of clients under the company includes OCBC Bank, Media Development Authority and CapitaLand. Epigram has won numerous international awards for their designs of annual reports including the Hong Kong Design Awards and the Graphis Gold Award for Annual Reports. They are also the first company in the world to win the Grand Prix award at the Red Dot consecutively. The success of the company in designing annual reports led to commissions for commemorative books for agencies such as National Trades Union Congress and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Epigram continues to provide services such as art direction, publication design, branding, signage and way-finding, and editorial development. The company Epigram Books, the publishing arm of Epigram set up in 1999, published its first book with mountaineer David Lim’s Mountain to Climb: The Quest for Everest and Beyond. Epigram Books bore the design and printing costs of the book and sold 5000 copies. Epigram Books was incorporated as a separate entity from the parent company in July 2011.

Company Profile
Epigram Books is well known in the Singapore arts and literary scene. They continuously publish fiction, non-fiction and poetry by Singapore-based writers, poets and playwrights with a focus on Asiatic themes and a strong emphasis on design. Epigram Books also publishes non-fiction titles of recipe books, food guides and graphic novels. Epigram Books launched Wee Editions which supports local designers, photographers and artists through the printing of a series of compact coffee table books.

Notable Achievements
In 2005, Epigram Books published a photography book featuring the work of Singapore-born Hollywood celebrity photographer Russel Wong Epigram Books also published a series of cookbooks, under the Heritage Cookbook series, by experienced homecooks that does not include pictures. The cookbooks rely heavily on the appeal of its design, with features of a waterproof cover, multicoloured ribbon bookmarks and printed rulers for measuring ingredients. In 2010, they published There’s No Carrot in Carrot Cake, a guide book to Singapore’s street food (or hawker food in colloquial terms) with the foreword written by Singapore’s Ambassador-At-Large Tommy Koh. The book sparked off a debate in the media about the need for a culinary school to preserve Singapore’s food heritage.

A short story, “Moving Forward” included in the compilation of Andrew Tan’s Monsters, Miracles & Mayonnaise was nominated for Eisner award for Best Short Story in 2013. Monsters, Miracles & Mayonnaise is one the three graphic novels that was published by the company in 2012. Epigram Books is also the first Singapore publishing house to have a comic book nominated for this prize. Another graphic novel, Ten Sticks and One Rice by Oh Yong Hwee and Koh Hong Teng won an International MANGA Award (Bronze) in 2014. Adeline Foo’s The Diary of Amos Lee series, published by Epigram Books has been sold to India, China, Indonesia, Slovakia and Czech Republic. The book has also been adapted into a television show in 2012 and has sparked spin-offs of characters in the series. A game that was mentioned in one of the books has also been turned into a game application for iPhone and iPad. The first book in the series won the International School Libraries Networks (ISLN) Red Dot Book Award for Best Junior Book. As of 2013, the series has sold nearly 200,000 copies worldwide. Other than publishing books by debut authors, Epigram Books has also taken to republish books that are out-of-print Singapore classics like, Jean Tay’s Boom and Everything but the Brain, and the late Goh Poh Seng’s book The Immolation. The company has also launched the Cultural Medallion series, where non-English works of Literature award recipients are translated into English. Some of the works include Singai M. Elangkannan’s Flowers at Dawn, Suratman Markasan’s Penghulu and Wong Meng Voon’s Under the Bed, Confusion. The company also kicked off the Singaporean Fairy Tales series which features re-imagined fairy tales by celebrities like Adrian Pang, Glen Goei and KF Seetoh. Part of the proceeds will go towards the Society for Promotion of ADHD Research and Knowledge. In 2014, Ministry of Moral Panic, a collection of short stories by Amanda Lee Koe, was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. [26]The same book won the Singapore Literature Prize for English Fiction. Epigram Books is currently sourcing for publishers in Britain so that local works published under the company will be eligible for the Man Booker Prize.