Vittachi

News feature: Top Book Prize for Asia-Pacific

Next Generation Story Prize Tipped for Asia-Pacific Writer

*

PERTH, AUSTRALIA: Win one of the world’s biggest literary prizes—from the keypad of your mobile phone.

The next generation book prize is here, and someone from Asia-Pacific is expected to cash in.

One of the world’s richest and most innovative literary awards is to be launched later this year—and will be judged by an East Asian author.

The revolutionary AALA prize, worth more than US$100,000, is open to cutting-edge novels designed to be read on mobile phones and computers, as well as traditional books.

The award is open to publishers worldwide, without the geographical restrictions of most other awards, although the book has to be set in Asia-Pacific.

Hong Kong crime writer Nury Vittachi, a syndicated columnist, will chair the panel of judges for the new prize.

The full name of the AALA is the Western Australian Premier’s Australia-Asia Literary Award. Winners will receive a cash payment of A$110,000 (US$103,000), making the prize far larger than the US$10,000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and putting it in the same league as the UK’s Man Booker Prize, which also stands at about US$100,000, depending on exchange rates.

               “This is a fabulous vote of confidence,” said Vittachi, who is chairing a three-strong judging panel. “It shows that while the West may have dominated popular culture up to now, it is time for world-class creativity from the eastern side of the planet to take its rightful place on the global stage.”

The Sri Lanka-born author will be joined by Kamila Shamsie, a Karachi-born author who judged the UK’s Orange Prize for Fiction, and a third judge, shortly to be announced.

Initial details of the award were revealed in Perth, Australia, by Mr Vittachi and Alan Carpenter, Premier of Western Australia.  The prize has been financed by the government of Western Australia as part of a major spending programme to make the area under its jurisdiction a regional hub for the arts. Entries for the new award are invited immediately, with the winner of the inaugural prize to be announced in the fall of this year. Entry forms are available on the Internet, at: www.dca.wa.gov.au. The closing date for books for this year is May 31.

In Japan, many of the recent top bestsellers were written on mobile phones and designed to be read on tiny screens. Readers in China also have an appetite for screen-published works. But while the new award is open to books published in new media formats, it excludes self-published works, thus avoiding vanity publishing projects.

Book industry executives in Asia and Australia see the new prize as an Asia-Pacific “Booker” and are enthusiastic about the message it presents to the world. Writing from Asians and Australians has made major inroads into world culture in recent years, with authors such as Thomas Keneally and Kiran Desai winning major awards.

Background: Book prizes

While the Man Booker Prize is arguably the world’s best known literary prize, it is limited to authors from the British Commonwealth and Ireland. A related prize, the Man Booker International Award, does not have geographical limitations, but is presented for a body of work, not for a specific book. The same is true for the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is for a single book, but is open to US authors only. In cash terms, the richest award is the IMPAC, a 100,000 Euro award presented in Dublin for books nominated by libraries around the world.
     The Kiriyama Prize is sometimes described as an Asian book award, but is actually a US prize, limited to Asia-themed books from North American publishing houses. Purely Asian book prizes do exist, but are generally very limited in scope, language range, cash size and publicity level.

For general queries, write to:
literaryawards@dca.wa.gov.au

To speak to someone about the award, contact:

Shauna Weeks (press officer)

Department of Culture and the Arts

Level 7, 573 Hay Street

Perth, Western Australia, WA 6000

Tel. +61 8 9224 7327

To speak to the chair of the judging panel, contact:

Nury Vittachi

P504 Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

nury@vittachi.com

Tel. +852 9806 8866

Free money if you can tell a good tale

Wanted: stories not about US lawyers and leggy blondes

By Nury Vittachi

Your Humble Narrator has just been to Australia for five minutes. Yes, that’s right, five minutes. And no, it wasn’t a brief touchdown in transit. It was an entire journey from Asia to Australia and back again for the purposes of an extremely short meeting.

           Of course, in the event, it wasn’t actually five minutes long. It lasted four minutes.

           Now I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: Why am I reading this boring column, anyway?

           Well, I have no answer to that. So you could actually stop here.

Those of you who choose to continue to read are demonstrating that you are either (a) highly discriminating, intelligent people or (b) sad folk with nothing better to do. Obviously, the answer is (a), so you will have deduced that it could only be worth my flying thousands of kilometers for a very, very, short meeting, if (a) I was an idiot or (b) because the meeting was important.

Obviously, the answer in this case is (b). (I can hear you say, “Obvious to who?” but I choose to ignore the comment.)

Anyway, here’s the tale. Some wise people in Australia noticed that people were enjoying stories more and more, in the shape of books, movies based on books, television series based on books, and so on. But while the vast majority of the world’s people live on the eastern side of the planet, all the big awards for story writers were on the western side. 

Second, ever since the rise of John Grisham, international law has decreed that all books are about young, male, American lawyers. In most thrillers, a handsome guy surmounts huge odds, battles villains, and wins a leggy blonde. But while that may be the plot of 90 per cent of modern fiction, it doesn’t reflect everyday life for the bulk of the world’s population (present columnist excluded).

Third, it was noticed that people were spending a lot of time staring at mobile phones and iPods.

Put all these facts together, and the answer became clear.  We needed to organize the mass importation of leggy blondes to Asia. No, what I meant was: we needed to organize a huge writing award for stories set in the Asia-Pacific region.

The smart guy behind this plan was one Alan Carpenter, Premier of Western Australia, and he chose your humble narrator to work on the judging side—which is why I had to fly Down Under to talk for four minutes in front of television cameras and press reporters.

So we’re launching a new story prize. It’s called the Western Australian Premier’s Australia-Asia Literary Award, or AALA for short, and is worth A$110,000 (US$102,000) for a single, good tale. That makes it the same as the famous Man Booker Prize of London, and is a sum of cash known technically in the financial world as Big Bucks. The AALA is open to some electronic books as well, so you may wish to start writing a story on the web or on your mobile phone.

Now some people will criticize me for flying 12,000 kilometers for a four-minute meeting. But in truth, I had some other adventures while I was there. To find out the juicy details, read my next book, soon to appear on your mobile phone screen. Okay, you can stop reading now.

Book gossip: The edible book is here

READERS WHO are in Hong Kong should make a point of visiting the Rotunda (the main atrium) in Exchange Square tomorrow, Saturday, between 12 pm and about 5 pm. The "Books2Eat" exhibition will be there -- wonderful examples of edible books. It's a great event for families, and the Hong Kong team have done a fine job of setting up a local branch of this international shindig. I'll be there from 2 pm onwards and will help judge the edible books (and eat a few, I hope). Click here for full details. You can also enjoy the tea party that follows, if you book in advance.

Book gossip: The Wolf starts to move

Asian authors are watching the progress of the wolf with bated breath. Lu Jiamin’s Wolf Totem, a bestseller in China, is now being launched in English. Will it be a notable piece of Asian fiction that turns into a Western bestseller as well?

Book gossip: Hari's jammies

TOP BRITISH novelist Hari Kunzru is going to have to put his pants back on. And he’s feeling a little nervous about it.

     The London-based author, darling of the critics, is to move to New York later this year. But instead of working from home, he will be based at the New York Public Library.

     “That means I have to actually put my clothes on,” he told me, looking rather alarmed. At the moment, he can shuffle straight from his bed to his computer without having to do anything as arduous as getting washed and dressed.

       “Why don’t you just treat it as a home-from-home and work in your pajamas anyway?” I suggested.

       His eyes brightened. “Not a bad idea, I could shuffle along the corridors in my robe with a mug of coffee and behave as if I was at home,” he said, pretending to yawn and scratch his crotch. "I could spread my stuff all over the place and go to sleep on the sofa."

       I told him that it would all add to the legend: writers are expected to be rather eccentric, after all.

       Next: Top British Novelist arrested for indecent exposure.

*

A round up of Asia-related publishing news (this is for you, Jan!)

*
ANOSH IRANI, the young Mumbai-born author now living in Canada, has just sold a new book. The work is a “multi-generational saga” about a family which migrated from Iran to Bombay – so it sounds a lot like the story of his life, but I assume it is fictionalized to a greater or lesser extent. It will come out in spring of 2009.

*
PENGUIN CHINA is looking at commissioning books instead of just buying them, I heard while in Shanghai over the weekend. And they’re happy to look at folk who write in English as well as those who work in Chinese. Interesting, huh?

*
DA CHEN, the Fujianese immigrant who became a law professor and successful novelist in the United States has a new book finished. It’s called The Sword and rights have been snapped up by Scholastic.

*

THE VIETNAM Culture and Information Publishing House is buying works in English, to translate into Vietnamese, I hear. Despite the name of the organization, it is not a propaganda house, but actually tries to operate as a popular fiction publisher. They’ve just bought Storm Front, a sci-fi thriller by Jim Butcher.

*
ONE OF THE MORE worrying book titles I have heard on the “manuscripts-just-sold” list this week is a book called “Men Are Wonderful” by Noelle Nelson. It is a work designed to help women realize that their male spouses have good qualities.
     Surely this should be self-evident?

Nury gets diced and sprinkled across Asia-Pacific

BIG CHANGES are afoot for this website from Monday. It will become the web home of a syndicated column that will be printed in many countries around Asia-Pacific.

                It will still keep its two main focuses—observational humor on Asia, and news about the writing business. And you’ll still be invited to comment or send in ideas. But much of the material will appear in print in many countries, too. For loyal readers who have been logging on or subscribing to this site, I hope you’ll realize that I’m sharing a little gift with you: an audience.

                While most other writers focus intently on the US or UK markets, I have always felt that Asians who communicate in English are the most exciting, fastest-growing, most interesting audience in the world.

                So that’s why I am putting my money where my big fat mouth is! And it’s not just an interesting audience, but a big one. It’s hard to tell exactly how big a readership I will have, but I’ve made deals with many newspapers and magazines, so it is likely to be a million-plus.

                If the column is appearing in a newspaper or magazine in your country, please support that publication. In general, columns will appear in print before they go on the web, so you’ll be ahead of web-only readers.

                On a larger scale, this is part of a big experiment. Is there such a thing as an Asian sense of humor? With your help, let’s find out.

                In the meantime, here’s a piece about the venture written by a journalist some of you may know, JJ Lee.

 

New agency seeks Asia-based writers

GET THOSE MANUSCRIPTS OUT. A new literary agency has been launched which is hungry for work from Asia. Osian’s Literary Agency is actively seeking new writers from the region.

“I am sure there are many good writers in the Philippines and elsewhere across Asia, who really need to be brought onto the international stage. I would love to see work from Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and elsewhere,” said the boss, Renuka Chatterjee.

She’s the real thing. Renuka has spent 15 years in publishing, with senior roles in the South Asian operations of Penguin and HarperCollins.

Osian’s is part of a big Indian conglomerate. Already on her list are writers such as Jose Dalisay. Click here for more details.

*

SOMETIMES HISTORY is too complicated to leave to historians and journalists. You need us writers and poets!

       We're a bit more holistic, you see.

       The truth of that principle has been aptly demonstrated in Fifty-Fifty, a new anthology in which writers discuss Hong Kong's 50-year window. (Before the transfer of sovereignty, Beijing promised to maintain Hong Kong’s way of life for half a century from 1997 to 047.)

       This is a really special book: thoughtful, wide-ranging, eye-opening, and enjoyably eccentric.

       While other publishers would have commissioned dull essays by academics, publisher Haven Books instead opted for personal vignettes, poems and memoirs. There’ll be aspects you love, and aspects that will irritate the hell out of you—a bit like Hong Kong itself. And also like Hong Kong, it’s an enjoyably rich, spicy hotpot of flavours.

       What are the odds for things in Hong Kong to go well? Editor Xu Xi writes:  “Perhaps by the time you close this volume, 50-50 may tilt towards more favourable odds...”

*

TWO OF MY FAVOURITE POETS have books out this month. While the choice of topics by Kate Rogers and Viki Holmes are very individual, both create poetry that’s accessible, thought-provoking and gives you that magical shiver of recognition that is the sign of fine writing. These are the sort of poetry books you want to take to an open-air tea-shop with a view of the harbor and read in the morning breeze over a lazy breakfast. Try it.

       You can pick up copies at the Poetry Outloud event on Wednesday March 5^th at the Fringe Bar in Central Hong Kong from 8 pm.

*

SALVATION MAY BE at hand for writers in Asia—at last. A major new umbrella organization for authors and literary organizations in the region is up and running. And a grand meeting of minds has been scheduled for this October in New Delhi.

The Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership has been set up by academics, authors and others to promote Asian writing and provide mentoring help so that emerging scribes can receive guidance from established ones. It will also provide a forum where publishers, academics and other literary types can meet and plot.

The group is planning a big meeting this fall with the theme “Writing the Future”.

             A huge list of international organizations has signed up to affiliate themselves with the new group. Founder members include Chris Merrill, who runs the famous Iowa writing school which counts John Irving (“The Cider House Rules”) among its alumni. The chairperson is Hong Kong-born novelist Xu Xi, and the executive director is Jane Camens, founder of the Hong Kong international literary festival.

             Authors, check out the website at www.apwriters.com and feel comforted that big powers are gathering from far and wide to pool their powers. (Sounds like a battle scene from Lord of the Rings, doesn’t it?).

*

A NEW LITERARY PRIZE is to be launched later this week. It will be managed by a small but fast-growing Hong Kong publisher. To celebrate the rise and rise of Proverse, the Proverse Dinner will be held at the Helena May on Friday 29 February. Proverse is run by poet Gillian Bickley and her husband Verner. Click here to go to their website to find out more about the event and the publisher, and to register for the dinner. Details of the prize, which will be given for an unpublished book-length manuscript of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, will be announced at the dinner. 

*

JOBS AVAILABLE: 

Random House in New York is looking for a senior editor for their Crown Hardcover line. The job is based in New York.

The Asia Pacific Writing Partnership is looking for staff to work on their October meeting. The job is based in New Delhi.

Barron’s Educational publishing house is looking for a sales representative for their operation in Detroit.

Drop me a line for details.

*
BIG CHANGES ARE AFOOT for the present writer – and for you, the community that has grown up around this little website. This page has been a little quiet recently, but it’s the lull before the storm.  But I have a couple of nice presents for you!  Keep in touch and all will come clear very soon.

The bookstore of the future

WELCOME TO THE BOOKSHOP OF THE FUTURE. Borders opened its prototype for future bookstores, I heard this morning. As well as heaps of great books, there’s a whole department dealing with digital content. You can buy music to download for your MP3 player or phone. You can make your own CD compilation albums, choosing your favourite tracks from different CDs. You can even bring in a disk with your own book on it and have it published through a deal with high-speed short-run publishing company lulu.com. You can buy Sony e-book readers (but not the Amazon Kindle e-book reader). And you can research your family tree or print out your photographs from your camera or camera-phone into photo albums. It’s in Ann Arbor, if you want to drop in next time you are in the United States.
*
KATHY REICHS, one of the world’s top-selling crime writers, told me yesterday that she is really looking forward to her visit to Hong Kong next month. If you haven’t read her books, check them out – fast moving, lively crime stories in classic style.
*
THE BRILLIANT HARI KUNZRU will be appearing at the Beijing literary festival next month. It’s got a great line-up. Click here to see the list of authors.
*
ARSHAD ISMEER wrote to this site about the Man Asian Literary Prize. “It is great that someone has started this prize because Asians cannot get published easily and even if they do there is no readership. Good writers are forced to work at jobs they don't like to keep the home fires crackling. You have done all Asians a real favour. Keep up the good work.” Thanks for kind words, Arshad, although I want to pass your good wishes along to the workers. I may have started this snowball moving down the mountain, but others are doing the day-to-day work these days. The real praise, though, must go to the authors who toil away to write books without any real hope of reward. Unpublished authors: after you’ve sent your piece to the prize judges, make sure you send work in for the Asia Literary Review as well – instead of celebrating just one lengthy piece a year, as a prize does, the ALR celebrates several dozen shorter pieces: make sure one of them is yours: www.asialiteraryreview.com
*

Diary: Rowling sicc's lawyers on fan

JK ROWLING is on the warpath. She has sicc’d her big fat lawyers to attack a fan who is preparing a guide to the world of Harry Potter. Of course it looks bad if one of the richest people on this planet attacks someone small. So her PR people have said that she wants the forthcoming Harry Potter Lexicon made illegal for the nicest of reasons.

    First, she may write a guide to Harry Potter herself. Second, if it was profitable, which it quite clearly may be, then she might give the money away. Thirdly, the money would probably be given to a charity.

    Thus, the PR says, it is not a case of someone big attacking someone small. It is a case of a naughty person deliberately depriving a poor charity of money it desperately needs.

    JK Rowling and her lawyers are arguing this with a straight face, despite the fact that neither the charity, the profits nor the book she may one day write actually exist.

    This argument is, of course, completely ridiculous. There are more than 200 guides to Harry Potter already in existence.

    JK Rowling has lost the plot.

    The fan's lawyers are putting up a brave fight and deserve to be supported. If you want to see the actual court papers, I‘ve got a set. Download rowling_case_file.pdf

     (The pic at the top shows Ms Rowling with one of her lawyers.)

*
WANT A FREE book for your phone, PDA, computer, etc? Tor (an excellent fantasy publisher, part of the Pan Macmillan group) are giving away free digital books for people who send them their email address. Go here and type your address onto the page.

*
A MEMOIR of growing up in China has just been sold to a major US publisher. Soho Press paid an undisclosed amount of money for a story by an author named Juanjuan Shen. The book doesn’t even have a title yet. The lads at Publishers’ Marketplace report that it tells “the story of the author's rise from poverty in the rice fields of China to striking it rich in the early days of the country's economic boom, witnessing the massive changes that took place in China in the last several decades, all the while chasing true love and acceptance”.

*

LOTS OF PEOPLE have asked me about my opinion on the Edison Chen case. The quick answer is: yes, I know all about it, and no, I am not going to post the photos here.

      For readers outside Hong Kong, this is a story with all the ingredients for a perfect media sensation. A sleazy but successful pop / movie star sleeps with a succession of top actresses and persuades them to pose for photographs for him. He explains that manufacturing his own pornography is his hobby. Amazingly, many of them agree – including the squeaky clean Gillian Chung (a woman who wept in public when someone published a picture of her in her bra).

       The man then sends his computer to a shop to be repaired. 

       Lo and behold, his entire collection of photos and movies ends up on the Internet in the hands of a mystery man called Kira, who releases them bit by bit on the internet, causing apoplexy in the Hong Kong media.

      The actresses are beyond fury. Some have reportedly threatened suicide.

      Edison, the man in question, flees Hong Kong.

      But the worst is yet to come: the mystery Kira releases more pictures, including naked shots Edison has taken of the niece of the head of the entertainment conglomerate for whom he works. His boss is a businessman reputed to be a very unpleasant man to get on the wrong side of, shall we say.    

      The police (and other organizations) are on the warpath.

      This whole issue is way too sleazy for misterjam to get involved with, but write to me personally if you want more.
*
THIS IS HOT. Richard Dawkins (“The God Delusion”) continues his campaign against the religious, but this time has chosen an easier target. He has just finished writing a manuscript called Only a Theory? which compiles all the evidence in favour of evolution, and thus will drive the creationists livid. However, there are far fewer people in that category than he might think. I know lots of religious people and not one of them are creationists. But being controversial has its rewards. The God Delusion made Dawkins wealthy and this one has already done the same. The word on the street is that Free Press, a US publisher, has promised him an advance of US$3.5 million for the manuscript.

Diary: Vikram, Vidal, still making waves in Asia

THE BUZZ says that top author Vikram Seth was arrested during a visit to the literary festival in Sri Lanka. Various version of this story are doing the rounds, including some lurid ones where he was seized by the army and thrown into prison. Given that Vikram is an artist of some talent, what may well have happened is that he was sketching the harbor at Galle, not realizing that the Sri Lankan authorities are very sensitive about that particular harbor (there was a terrorist attack on it some years ago). Seth himself cannot be blamed – since the place is full of tourists roaming around snapping pictures, one would think it would be fine for an artist to do some sketching there. But Sri Lankan army officers can be somewhat brusque, and it's hard to blame them, considering the difficulties they face. Anyway, the organizers of the Galle Literary Festival are well connected with the government and I’m sure would have sorted it out quickly and efficiently.

*
SRI LANKA’S GAIN was India’s loss. The visit of Gore Vidal to the Sri Lankan festival turned out to be the great man’s only visit to south Asia after he changed his mind about going to the festival at Jaipur. The story goes that the sheer inanity of south Asian journalists put him off – and I can see how that could have happened, being a south Asian journalist myself. Sheela Reddy in Outlook magazine reports that one reporter asked “Are you a writer?” while another asked: “What books have you written?”

        Vidal is famously tetchy. My advice: do a degree in literature, specializing in his life and works, before even attempting to interview him.

*
HOLT BOOKS has bought the rights to publish Nanjin, a manuscript about a young woman in Korea during the Japanese occupation. The book is by Eugenia Kim, a name I don’t know. But it's got people excited. Holt paid more than US$50,000 for the text, according to Publishers’ Marketplace.

*
THE PAN MACMILLAN gang in Hong Kong are heading off to Phuket next week for a sales conference. They’re a fun bunch of people who have had a great year, so they’ll no doubt have much to celebrate.

*

WORKING ON A BIOGRAPHY? The Center for the Humanities at the City University of New York Graduate Center will provide US$60,000 year-long residencies for up to six biographers. The resources come courtesy of the center’s new Leon Levy Center for Biography, according to The Biographer’s Craft, a newsletter. The newsletter describes it as “maybe the largest, best-funded, and most ambitious effort to foster biographical writing". For the conceited among us, no, I don't know whether you are allowed to collect US$60,000 and take a year off to write a book about yourself.

*
THE CONCERTED EFFORT by writers to support Patry Francis (see the posting below) was wildly successful. “It helped move her novel from a ranking of 55,000 on Amazon at the start of the day, to #1 in Mystery, 375 over all by evening,” a delighted Karen Dionne told me yesterday.