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Hong Kong author Nury Vittachi will chair the judging panel of the new Australia-Asia Literary Award this year. -- ST FILE PHOTO
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Just a year after the launch of the Man Asian Literary Prize, Asian writers have all the more incentive to write - A$110,000 (S$142,000), to be exact.
The new Australia-Asia Literary Award (AALA) is open to any English novel by a writer from Asia, Australia or New Zealand, or which is set primarily in this region. It is organised by the government of Western Australia and will be given out annually.
Publishers must submit entries by the end of this month, and the prize will be announced in November in Perth, the state's capital.
The A$1.2 million invested in the AALA, part of a A$73 million package set aside by the Western Australian government to promote arts and culture over the next four years, makes it the richest literary prize in Asia, and one of the richest in the world.
In comparison, the International Impac Dublin Literary Award, which is the richest prize in the world and which is open to any novel published in English, is worth £68,000 (S$182,000), while the Man Booker Prize, open to any writer from the Commonwealth of Nations or the Republic of Ireland, is worth £60,000.
The Pulitzer Prize for American authors is worth US$10,000 (S$13,700), the Kiriyama Prize for novels about the Pacific Rim and South Asia is worth US$15,000, while the Man Asian Prize for unpublished novels by Asian writers is worth US$10,000.
Ms Allanah Lucas, acting director general of Western Australia's Department of Culture and the Arts, says: 'It has been acknowledged that most of the literary awards that are currently available are based in Europe. The time has come to celebrate our region's creativity, imagination and self-confidence.'
But the new AALA is not impressive only because of its bounty. In an unprecedented move for a major literary prize, it will also accept electronically published fiction.
But don't all rush to submit your blogs. Organisers clarify that such fiction must have been published by an established third party, such as an online journal or e-book publisher.
Says Hong Kong author Nury Vittachi, 49, who will chair the three-person judging panel this year: 'Accepting books published electronically is a daring step. However, we are not including vanity publications, or self-financed ones, so that narrows the scope considerably.'
He adds that Asians have been quicker than their Western counterparts to embrace electronically published books. In Japan, for example, five of the 10 best-selling novels published last year started out as mobile phone novels - stories tapped out on mobile phone keypads and uploaded onto websites. (see story below)
'I can imagine that tech-obsessed people such as Singaporeans will soon be tapping great novels into their mobile phones as they commute to work,' says Vittachi, author of the popular Feng Shui Detective series, about a crime-solving Chinese geomancer based in Singapore.
Literary insiders will also remember that Vittachi, who co-founded the Hong Kong Literary Festival in 2000, was controversially sacked from its board last year after he expressed dissatisfaction with the way it was organising the Man Asian prize. One of his concerns was that the prize's inaugural judging panel did not include anyone from Asia.
However, the writer pooh-poohs any suggestion that his decision to chair this new prize is in response to the earlier fracas. 'The Man Asian Literary Prize is a small award for works unpublished in English, so there is no overlap between the two,' he says.
Meanwhile, local publishers say that they are excited by the new prize and plan to submit titles. However, the two main publishers of local literature, Ethos and Firstfruits, note that there have not been a lot of novels written by Singaporeans lately, discounting self-published ones.
Says publisher Enoch Ng, 41, of Firstfruits: 'We have the ability to write novels. It is just that there is a lot of opportunity cost involved, and Singaporeans are pragmatic. You might have to quit your job for two to three years while writing a novel. It is a hard decision, and even if you want to do it, friends and family might dissuade you.'
But they agree that this prize just might be the incentive - or excuse - some writers need to start pounding out the prose.
Says Ethos' Mr Fong Hoe Fang, 53: 'Even I am tempted to write something. Maybe I will tell my wife that I am going to hide in the mountains for six months.'
ysteph@sph.com.sg
Publishers can go to www.dca.wa.gov.au for more details on the AALA. Closing date is May 31.
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