From February to June 2025, for three hours every weekday, Ratna Damayanti Taha would open her laptop and work.

At 9am, once her apartment was quiet, the 44-year-old would sit at her kitchen island with a cappuccino – no sugar, lots of milk – and return to her manuscript.

She was working on her novel Mind The Gap, which follows Nora, an introspective Malay girl whose coming-of-age plays out against the expansion of Singapore’s MRT system from the 90s to the present. As more train lines are added, she grapples with questions about meritocracy, race and how to chart her own path.

That manuscript won the 2026 Epigram Books Fiction Prize in January. The win, which came with S$25,000 and a publishing contract, still feels surreal, she said.

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What felt more real was the moment she submitted her draft.

In July 2025, Ratna carried five copies of her manuscript in a tote bag to the Epigram Books office in Toa Payoh North. After handing them over, she walked out to the open-air car park beside the industrial building.

Without planning to, she sat down and began to cry. “It was around 10am, and the heat was quite unforgiving – one of those very bright, Singapore days,” she recalled. “It felt very still, like the world had paused for a bit.”

She felt relief mostly, that she had made it to the end. And joy, as she had finally ticked off something that had been sitting with her since she was a child.

“I was flooded with emotions,” said the stay-at-home mother of four, who works part-time as an academic and market researcher, and freelance translator.

After she calmed down, she called her husband at work. “I didn’t really say much. I think I just wanted to hear his voice. That was enough.”

THE FIRST "TO-BE-READ-OUT" MOMENTS

Ratna’s love for stories began with listening. Her father worked shifts – 48 hours at work and the next 48 at home. When he was home, he would put Ratna and her brothers to bed and tell them bedtime stories he’d improvised.

Her mother, who did not learn English in school, taught herself through public libraries – borrowing Danielle Steel novels, cookbooks and children’s books. She worked on her pronunciation by talking to their neighbours and watching Sesame Street and The Electric Company with Ratna.

In Primary 5, she realised she might be good at writing. Her English teacher, Mrs Irene De Silva, ran a simple system: If a composition was good, it was “to-be-read-out” (TBRO) to the class.

The first time Ratna’s story – a 1990s allegory about an “old lion” (representing founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew) watching over his land – was chosen, she remembers feeling validated. She never thought her stories were worth being read out.

Her secondary school Malay language teacher, Ms Roziyah, deepened her confidence. When Ratna and her classmates proposed putting up a full drama production – scripting, directing, marketing and selling tickets – they expected resistance. Instead, they got: “Can. Let’s go.”

“That kind of project was fundamental for me,” Ratna said. “It made me more confident in the creative arts.”

The same teacher also taught her something about failure. Some of her compositions soared; others flopped. Once, she scored five out of 60. Instead of discouraging her, Ms Roziyah wrote a note: “This story would be great if it were further developed; I look forward to reading it.”

“She taught me that it’s okay to write poorly sometimes,” Ratna said. “It’s okay not to be good all the time.”

WRITING IN FRAGMENTS

For years, Ratna’s fiction lived in fragments, in both English and Malay – concepts rewritten as verse for her children, poems when feeling emotional, observations of people she encounters.

“I write mostly as a means to make sense of the world,” she said.

In 2018, she bookmarked the Epigram Prize entry page with no manuscript in sight.

Her first complete story came during the pandemic, when her somewhat-retired father felt isolated, unable to meet friends at the mosque or kopitiam. The required apps – TraceTogether, check-ins – confused him, intensifying his loneliness.

Ratna called him often. He told her stories from his youth, sailing pilgrims from Singapore, Indonesia, and across Asia to the Hajj. “I wanted to record his experiences for posterity,” she said. “The details I couldn’t find in history books came from our chats.”

Those conversations became a short story in Malay about elderly isolation during the pandemic. In it, an elderly man finds an unlikely friend in a teenage boy with autism.

When she came across the Golden Point Award – a local creative writing competition for poetry and short stories in Singapore’s four official languages – she thought it would resonate with people, especially the elderly, coping with COVID-19 restrictions.

“It was a love letter to my father,” she said. “It was best written in a language (where) he could easily understand what I was trying to express.”

When the story won the 2021 Golden Point Award for Malay short story, it was her first “adult” TBRO moment. Her voice had been acknowledged on a national stage, giving her the confidence to attempt a novel.

CRAFTING NORA: A MALAY GIRL’S REALITIES

Mind The Gap began on the MRT, as Ratna observed commuters and wondered about their lives. Those questions sent her back to her own teenage years in the 90s, shaping the idea for the book.

As a first-time novelist, Ratna chose what felt most honest: realism and the perspective of a Malay girl in Singapore.

Part of the decision was representation. “My kids read a lot,” she explained. “But there aren’t many main characters they can really see themselves in.”

Her kids, all born in September, are aged 17, 15, 10, and seven. One carries a book everywhere she goes, another reads in intense bursts, one loves Singapore fiction, and the youngest is currently fascinated with non-fiction.

Ratna said she wanted to add a “small contribution to the critical mass of voices” through Mind The Gap, so that stories about Malay lives would exist beyond Racial Harmony Day and tokenistic diversity.

That sense of representation is rooted in her own lived experience of being visibly Muslim in Singapore.

Ratna’s decision to wear the tudung in her early 30s was a personal expression of faith – but one that also placed her at the centre of others’ assumptions.

She recalls an elderly Chinese woman asking how she obtained her Singapore citizenship. “Maybe she really didn’t have the opportunity to meet someone like me,” said Ratna. “These are small, everyday things I wanted to write about.

“As a writer, this is my way of saying: If you know something is a stereotype, let’s have a conversation. Give people a chance before you jump to conclusions.”

GRIEF AND THE WRITING LIFE

The lowest point in her writing journey came in 2023 when her father died. He was 78.

In his final days, he gave her and her two brothers “nice closures”. To her, he said: “You have been a very good daughter. I couldn’t ask for a better daughter.” For Ratna, those words were an immeasurable gift.

But grief, even when free of regret, can be heavy. Ratna stopped writing. “I was feeling a lot without a place to put it,” she said. “I felt lost for quite a long time.”

It was only after she worked through the grief – reflecting on the wonderful life he had led and appreciating his legacy – that she could start writing again. This took almost a year.

“I wish I could tell my dad that I finished writing my book,” she said quietly.

DEFINING SUCCESS ON HER OWN TERMS

In her 30s, Ratna’s self-belief wavered – not about her writing, but about her life choices.

Society prescribed a trajectory: Get good grades, get a good job, get married, build a career. When you don’t follow that path, people around you say certain things, she said.

“You have a master’s degree – are you sure you want to be a stay-at-home mum? You work in communications – are you sure you want to wear a tudung?

“Those questions haunted me,” she said.

Her husband, an engineer, was her anchor. He encouraged her to think clearly: What is your true north? What kind of person do you want to be?

The answers were simply: “I want to be a good person, a useful person, to be happy,” she said.

Over time, clarity came. “I realised I love being a stay-at-home mum,” she said. “When I see my kids growing up and thriving, what more can I ask for? My job is done. You have to measure success on your own terms – not against what other people define as success.”

ANOTHER ADULT “TO-BE-READ-OUT” MOMENT

On the night of the Epigram Books Fiction Prize Awards Ceremony in January 2026, Ratna did not expect to win. She had already survived two rigorous culls: First, being longlisted as one of the top eight manuscripts from over 50 entries across Southeast Asia and then shortlisted as one of four final nominees.

For an aspiring author, the shortlist was the true victory – it carried a guaranteed publishing contract with Epigram Books. She was already thrilled just to know her story would finally be in print.

When her name was announced, she was shocked. “I felt paiseh (embarrassed in Hokkien) and validated. It’s another ‘to-be-read-out’ moment,” she said. 

Now drafting new stories rooted in social realism, Ratna is most proud of finally trusting her own voice. “I don’t think it’s a made-up voice. It is a Ratna voice.”

Her advice to anyone still writing in the margins is simple: hold onto every fragment of your experience. The mess of life isn’t a distraction from the work – it is the work.

Mind The Gap goes on sale in July 2026 at Popular Bookstore, Kinokuniya, Book Bar and Wardah Books. It will also be available in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Myanmar.