Mulaika for David T.K. Wong

Just came across this little nugget of information. This year's David T.K. Wong scholarship has gone to a Malaysian writer - Mulaika Hijjas. The award, worth £25,000 is given to a writer who wants to write in English about the Far East to fund a residency at UEA. The recipients have included acclaimed Thai/American writer Rattawat Lapcharoensap. (You can read about the others here.)

According to the information on the website:

Mulaika Hijjas, our latest David T. K. Wong Fellow, has published short fiction in literary journals in the United States, Malaysia and Hong Kong. After leaving university she spent two years working full time on a collection of short stories, before doing a PhD on nineteenth-century Malay poetry by women at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She is from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, but now lives on the Isle of Dogs in London. While at the University of East Anglia, she will be working on a novel set in contemporary Jakarta, about an expatriate English family and their Indonesian servants.

I read one of her stories The Durian Season which appeared in the Southeast Asian Review of Literature some time back - and it is very good.

Malaika is the first recipient of the award from Malaysia, although Tash Aw and another friend (I'm not sure if she wants her name mentioned, so I won't ... but she was one of Raman's lazy Silverfish writers) have financed their own way through the MA in Creative Writing at UEA.

Congrats Mulaika, and all the best with your novel.

Related Posts:

The Real David T.K. Wong (5/6/06)
A Toast to Mr. Wong (13/10/06)

David T.K. Wong Prize Cancelled

Blog reader Janet Tay wrote to tell me that the one of the most important short story competitions, the David T. K. Wong Prize, has been cancelled. English PEN which administers the award cites economic factors and International PEN's long term strategy for the future.

As Janet points out, there really aren't many competitions open to international entries. Let's hope International PEN comes up with something good to put in its place soon!

The Real David T. K. Wong

Though I may have toasted David T. K. Wong a few months ago for setting up a fellowship that annually funds a South-East Asian writer to do the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, I knew nothing about the man himself.

But then Yang-May Ooi met him at a party and got a chance to find out. Do read.