SWF has hosted Singaporean writers Meira Chand, Cyril Wong, Suchen Christine Lim and You Jin, as well as international writers such as Steven Levitt,[2] Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman,[3] Bi Feiyu, David Mitchell, Bei Dao, F. Sionil Jose, Taichi Yamada, Andrew Motion, Alexis Wright and Marc Smith.
To date, it remains one of the few literary festivals in the world that is multi-lingual, celebrating works in Singapore’s official languages – English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil.
In July 2014, writer Ovidia Yu resigned from the festival's steering committee in protest against the National Library Board's move to pulp children's picturebooks with homosexual themes.
[9] The Golden Point Award (GPA) started in 1993 and has been organised in conjunction with SWF by the National Arts Council of Singapore.
This aim of this grant is to provide writers with sufficient funds to participate in writing seminars, workshops, literature festivals overseas, or to publish their first solo publication.