Engineer Iris Kong Wins $32,000 Mirror Fiction Grand Prize in Taiwan

Iris Kong has won the NT$1 million ($32,000) Grand Prize at the fifth Mirror Fiction Award, announced at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF). Her suspense novel "The Stand-In Family" (provisional title) follows four strangers who impersonate a family inside a house where a murder has taken place, living under the surveillance of a property developer until one of them must confront a past wrongdoing.

The award drew 529 submissions this year, totaling more than 40 million Chinese characters. Winners were chosen through multiple rounds of judging.

Why the winning author wrote for the screen first

Kong, an engineer by profession, said the prize shaped the story from its inception. "This award was a clear goal for me when I created the story," she said. "I had written other works before, but adapting them for the screen would have been too expensive. So this time, I started with a realistic setting and considered production costs from the beginning."

The NT$700,000 ($22,500) Judges' Award went to Malaysian writer Liang Xuan for "Endless Rain" (provisional title). Both winning works are eligible for publication and screen adaptation development through Mirror Fiction.

The two cash prizes, roughly a full year's salary for many Taiwanese office workers, signal how seriously the company courts writers. Mirror Fiction CEO Tung Cheng-yu said the award was designed to encourage writers and introduce promising literary properties to potential investors.

"I believe that only when you genuinely fall in love with a story can you make the best adaptation," Tung said. "Adapting a novel for the screen is much easier than starting from scratch because the novel already has an established world."

What do the attendance numbers show?

Citing audience figures, Tung said films adapted from books drew more than 40% higher attendance than original films, and that the gap for television content exceeded 60%. She did not identify the source of the figures during her presentation.

Put plainly: the company's business case rests on adapted stories outperforming originals by a wide margin on both big and small screens.

What is on the 2027 slate?

Sales director Sharleen Liu introduced five literary projects for Mirror Fiction's 2027 IP slate:

• "036037" — Kevin Chen's contemporary romance about two middle-aged people revisiting a relationship from more than two decades earlier, exploring regret and the possibility of moving on. Chen's novel "Ghost Town" has been published in English. The book has already secured a screen adaptation deal, with a four-volume print edition scheduled for December.
• "The Midnight Masseuse: A Taipei Noir" — Tommy Tan's crime thriller, opening with the murder of a female massage therapist and exposing connections among police officers, prosecutors, politicians and business interests.
• "Double Diplomacy" — Daniel Hsieh's story of two brothers, one a diplomat and one a criminal strategist, who exchange identities and are drawn into a diplomatic crisis involving international negotiations and organized crime.
• "Red-Haired Inibs" — by Indigenous writer and historian Nakao Eki Pacidal, following a girl of mixed Indigenous and Dutch ancestry in 17th-century Taiwan. Inibs were female priests of the Indigenous Siraya people. Her search for her father becomes a journey into identity, belonging and the lives of people left out of official historical accounts.
• "The Stand-In Family" — Kong's Grand Prize-winning thriller, closing the lineup.

Who is Mirror Fiction?

Mirror Fiction develops literary properties for publication and cross-media adaptation, and has expanded into film and television investment and production. Its credits include the Netflix series "The Victims' Game," which won at Taiwan's Golden Bell Awards, the country's top TV honors. Its investments include Chung Mong-hong's "The Falls," Taiwan's Oscar submission, and horror film "The Rope Curse 3."

With five IP projects now dated for 2027 and both award winners in line for adaptation, the company has lined up its next three years of source material — provided the attendance figures hold.