WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT.

We’ve painted poetry on sidewalks, sent writers to give workshops in prisons, and staged multi-disciplinary exhibitions and mini-festivals across the country. From our annual month-long challenge SingPoWriMo to our ever-growing school outreach programme Book A Writer, we’ve grown from strength to strength, enough to be labelled most recently in The Straits Times as “the unofficial centre of Singapore literary activity”.

Well — Sing Lit Station is raring to introduce a bold, new endeavour in its ninth year of operations. We’re starting a literary press.

WHY A LITERARY PRESS NOW?

We saw that there were fewer avenues for poets to be published, and fewer places that were willing to platform writing that might be considered experimental or “overly literary”.

We recognised that our nation’s poets and writers were in as great a need as ever for presses that could advocate for their authors; represent and safeguard their rights; enthusiastically talk about their titles; and nurture their words with attention to detail and an openhearted, multi-format approach to disseminating their work.

We knew that the spirit of our publishing arm would have to be borne out of our rich literary culture. And when we searched for a name, we plumbed through our shelves and stumbled across a poem by Arthur Yap titled “conceptual art”, found in his 1977 collection commonplace.

It describes the imprint that a work of art can leave on a place, a person. The lines, littered with caesuras of contemplation, describe “the resulting afterimage” as such: “is strangely, too loud. // is, / too, enough.”

OUR DONOR ROLL CALL

These folks are everything to us. We thank you for giving your dollars in service to a dream.

BARD

Daren Shiau

is a fiction writer, poet and editor. He was the National Arts Council’s Young Artist of the Year in 2002. His works include Heartland (1999), Peninsular: Archipelagos and Other Islands (2000), and a seminal microfiction collection Velouria (2007). From 2021 to 2023, Daren served as Co-Chair of the Singapore Writers Festival's maiden Advisory Panel. He currently serves as Grant Selection Committee Chair of the inaugural Writers' Grant by the Singapore Book Council.

MUSE

Daryl Qilin Yam
Ian Chung
Lee Wai Fong

PERSONAGE

Goh Shu Fen
Meira Chand
Tan Kheng Hua
Tan Kok Yam

EVERY WORD COUNTS; EVERY DOLLAR MATTERS

(1) STAFF: We intend to maintain a minimum of three people to form the press’s core team: a Managing Editor to handle the birth of a book; a Sales and Marketing Manager to execute the marketing, distribution and storage of our titles; and a Chief Publisher to oversee both of the aforementioned portfolios, with an eye toward business development and partnerships.

(2) BOOKS: Every title we publish won’t just be our contribution to culture — it will also be an investment in our authors’ future. With printing costs rising and fierce competition from other artmakers competing for audiences’ attention, we also intend to invest heavily in sales and marketing efforts to promote word-of-mouth and ensure the longevity of our efforts. Every book however would still cost us about two month’s worth of manpower to produce.

(3) ECOSYSTEMS: It’s standard practice for resellers and distributors to take a 60% cut for every book we hand over to them. Travel and freight costs will be incurred if we want to be able to export our titles to regional partners and at international trade fairs. Finally, we’ll need a larger office to accommodate the addition of our new team members and our ever-increasing inventory.

BE A PART OF THE DREAM

We’re seeking donors who’d like to support the growth of Singapore poetry and the revitalisation of our country’s literary canon. We’re looking for folks who can champion everything we want our press to be known for: its literary spirit, its belief in Singaporean stories, and its commitment to diversity in as many areas as we can reach.

To make a contribution:

  1. Get in contact via email to <publishing@singlitstation.com> so that we might send you the relevant details, or

  2. Make a contribution via our giving.sg campaign (indicating that you’re making a donation to AFTERIMAGE in your dedication message).

As a registered arts charity and Institute of Public Character, every dollar you donate to Sing Lit Station will grant you a tax rebate 250% of its value and be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Cultural Matching Fund. You will also be recognised as a Founding Donor of our publishing arm, with different tiers of recognition and entitlements depending on the quantum of your donation. We have four tiers listed below:

    • >$2 donation: OFTHENOW subscription

    • >$100 donation: 10% discount code (1 year)

    • >$300 donation: 1 signed copy of every book published over 12 months

    • >$500 donation: Name on colophon page over 24 months

    • Name on website over 24 months

    • OFTHENOW subscription

    • 10% discount code (2 years)

    • 1 + 2 signed copies of every book published over 24 months

    • Name on website and colophon page over 24 months

    • OFTHENOW subscription

    • 20% discount code (2 years)

    • 1 + 4 signed copies of every book published over 24 months

    • Name on website and colophon page over 24 months

    • OFTHENOW subscription with special feature / commission in dedicated issue

    • 20% discount code (2 years)

    • 3 +54 signed copies of every book published over 24 months

    • Name on website, CIP page and colophon page over 24 months

Alternatively, you may compare the different entitlements across our four tiers via this infographic below (best viewed on desktop):