Australia-Asia literary Prize Scrapped

Found some sad news at the Literary Saloon website.  Apparently, the (A$110,000) Australia-Asia Literary Award, which gave local writers a very welcome shot at an international award, has been scrapped after just one year. But the decision to pull the plug, of course,  wasn't entirely unexpected. 

The End of a Literary Award?

It seems that the Australia-Asia Literary Award, won in its inaugural year by David Malouf, will not be run this year [found via] ... and perhaps not ever again.

The prize money, format and timing are currently under review. The fact that not a single Western Australian writer made the shortlist (although the state was footing the bill) must surely be a factor. And who can afford such generous prize money (the award is worth more than any other in Australia) in these difficult times?

But this is very bad news for authors from this part of the world, who have very few enough literary awards to aim for ...

Australia-Asia Won by Malouf

This is a much overdue post (sorry!) on the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Prize which was won by David Malouf (left) for his collection The Complete Stories. It is really nice to see the short story in good health after dire prognostications were made of its demise, and this sounds a fine book.

The award is an important one as chief judge Nury Vittachi said at the prize dinner:

There's a massive change coming up and Asia will be the world's hot spot. The bulk of the world's consumers are here in the Asia-Pacific, and they're going to need books set here. Asia on its own can't climb on to the world contemporary literature stage easily and neither can Australia. Put the two together, and they're unbeatable. People are not recognising this. But this award does, so I do hope they continue it. ... You've got this fabulous market right here: there are four billion Asians, they're all obsessed by education and almost all of them studying English. So what do they do? They go out and buy English books.

Let's hope more Asian voices will find their way onto the longlist in future years ... including, if it isn't tempting fate to wish this, some of our own.

Shortlist for Australian-Asia Literary Award

Back in April, I blogged about the inaugral Western Australian Premier's Australia-Asia Literary Award, for which Nury Vittachi was named one of the judges. We all gave a little cheer for a prize which would perhaps be a much needed platform for fiction from this part of the world.

Now the shortlist for this "the richest literary award in Australia and Asia" has been announced:

The Lost Dog by Australian author Michelle de Kretser

Blood Kin by Australian and South African citizen Ceridwen Dovey

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Pakistani and UK citizen Mohsin Hamid

Orpheus Lost by US-based Australian author Janette Turner Hospital and

Complete Stories by Australian David Malouf.

I missed announcing the longlist earlier, I'm afraid, but you can find it on the award website.

(Am perplexed though that Mohsin Hamid's book could still be considered as it was published more than a year before the longlist came out, surely?)

The Literary Saloon is upset that :

... J.M.Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year didn't make the cut; neither did the only other longlisted title we had under review, Murakami Haruki's After Dark. ... And we repeat once again: this prize is about as 'Asian' as ... well, something that's only Asian to a very limited extent: as it does not allow submissions from so many Asian nations it is surely completely misleading for it to call itself in any way an 'Asian' prize.

Perth Now seemed rather upset (justifiably, I think) that the state was footing the bill for an award :

... despite the absence of any local contestants or judges.

The award is open to works written by authors resident in Australia or Asia, or which are set primarily in Australia or an Asian country. The award this year drew 111 entries from across the world. (At least one from Malaysia.)

The winner will be announced on November 21 in Perth.

Nury the Chief Judge

Author Nury Vittachi has long championed the cause of writing in Asia. He started the Asian Literary Review, was co-founder of the Hong Kong Literary Festival and was instrumental is setting up the Man Asia Literary Prize before being sacked from the organizing committee after a row about racial insensitivity.

Now Nury has now been named chief judge of Australasia's newest and richest book prize the annual Western Australian Premier's Australia-Asia Literary Award of $110,000. It is recognition that he greatly deserves.

Paige Taylor interviews Nury in the Australian about how he believes the new award would

... kick-start a writing revolution (and) uncover some of the world's next great authors from within Asia ...

where there is as yet no equivalent to the Booker or the Pulitzer.

The award is open to :

... any book-length work of literary fiction published in print or electronically, in recognition of the increasing predominance of electronic media such as online and mobile-phone formats.

(I am absolutely thrilled that an Australian prize is open to Asian authors but as yet I have no information about who is eligible to enter and how - let me see what I can find out and here is the link to the award website and the rules for submission and entry form.)

Nury's whole life seems to be bound up with literary prizes. Ironically, it was an award winning book written by his father that once saved his family from certain death in Sri Lanka.

Do go check out Nury's blog as he has posted some of his very amusing articles and columns. I particularly enjoyed his account of lunch with Jeffrey Archer who was in Hong Kong as part of his book tour to promote his latest novel A Prisoner of Birth :

I mean, if you look up “over-achiever” in the Oxford Dictionary, you’ll find a two-word entry “Jeffrey Archer”. Consider this. The guy has a go at writing novels and writes global bestsellers. He has a go at politics and becomes chairman of the ruling party. He has a go at acting and ends up with a hit show in the West End of London. Had he decided to have a go at making a life-sized replicas of the Himalayas out of Nissin instant noodles, we would now be reading reports of mountaineers snacking their way up to 29,000 feet.

Update :

More about the award in the Age. Honestly, I'm pinching myself ...