Nam Le's The Boat wins Prime Ministers Literary Award

THE venue might have been a clue. Against the creaking masts of Sydney's National Maritime Museum, The Boat by Nam Le was named winner of the $100,000 Prime Minister's Literary Award for fiction yesterday

The much-awarded debut collection of short stories by Le, 30, who came to Australia as a Vietnamese refugee, covers a cosmopolitan cast of characters, from a Colombian gang member to Vietnamese boat people. ''Le combines almost reckless artistic boldness with highly disciplined craft,'' said the judges.

In announcing the awards, the Minister for the Arts, Peter Garrett, did not mention the political timeliness of Le's subject but others noted topical themes running through the winning books.

''Both [non-fiction] books are about the disease of the 20th century - racism,'' said Phillip Adams, the non-fiction judges' chairman.

''They are all books about arrival in Australia,'' said James Boyce, author of the short-listed history Van Diemen's Land.

Le's win kept the fiction award in the ranks of debut authors as Steven Conte's first novel, The Zookeeper's War, won the inaugural award last year. Le's win recognises that ''short stories are so much part of our literary tradition'', said another short-listed novelist, Peter Goldsworthy.

Le could not be at yesterday's function, but in a speech read by his publisher, he thanked the judges for rewarding a ''collection of unlinked short stories from an ex-lawyer'' and said he felt ''like a petty thief on murderers' row'' in the company of the other finalists: Goldsworthy, Murray Bail, Geraldine Brooks, Richard Flanagan, Joan London and another first-timer, Sofie Laguna.

Books, he said, ''are the truest means of telling and showing us to ourselves, that they do a strange, unaccountable, irreplaceable work that the loose, baggy monsters of film, TV, and internet cannot''.

Next 100 Emerging Leaders

The Weekend Australian Magazine's Next 100 Emerging Leaders.  I went through all the nominees and found the ones below.  I can't find a 'normal' pic of Yiying, maybe there isn't one cos she definitely doesn't seem normal but hey, that's the way we like her!

Culture

Nam Le

When award-winning writer Nam Le's first book, The Boat, was published last year it was an astounding critical and commercial success. "I hope to keep writing," says Le. "In different genres as well. And travelling. Other than that, I'm not sure. I'd love to give other (non-writing) things a go as well." The former lawyer and Vietnamese refugee grew up in Melbourne, graduating with a BA (honours) and LLB (honours) from Melbourne University. His first job was a toss-up between "working at a Doc Marten shop in the city or a Yellow Pages Direct call centre". Now living in the UK and working as writer-in-residence at the University of East Anglia, Le is also fiction editor of the US Harvard Review. Like many writers, he finds inspiration in everyday events:"Music, movies, real-life stories. I'm constantly amazed by the things people do to bet by, to be of use to each other."


Thinking

Dorjee Sun

Dorjee Sun lists homes as "Sydney, Singapore, Indonesia, USA, Suriname, planes, airports and hotels", a taste of the frequent flyer points he has racked up while brokering carobn offset deals in developing nations. After graduating in commerce and law from UNSW, Sydney-born Sun found success in online recruitment and web-media startups before his passion for the environment took him to the jungles of Indonesia. In 2007, the governors of Aceh, Papua and Papua Barat signed an agreement giving Sun rights to seek carbon credits to minimise deforestation across 50 million hectares of their land; he then jetted to the US to sell the credits to companies such as Merril Lynch. The deal won an award from Environmental Finance magazine and is the subject of The Burning Season, which opens in Australian cinemas in July(passed).

Innovation

Gail Sorronda

Winning the 2004 Qld Mercedes-Benz Start-Up Awards with her debut collection,"Angel at My Table", marked the start of a beautiful career for Gail Sorronda (formerly Gail Reid). "The award enabled me to show at Australian Fashion Week," she says. "It was the catalyst moment that launched me into a career as a fashion designer." Since then, the QUT Fine Arts (Fashion) graduate has opened her own store in Brisbane and been invited to be a part of the Designers For Target line. Her bold black and white designs have won international praise for their bold structure and drama, appearing in fashion magazines and worn by celebrities. Sorronda, who recently presented at AFW, is now living in Paris where she says she's developing a capsule winter collection between Paris and Italy".

Yiying Lu

In 2008, an image of a whale held aloft by birds became an overnight sensation on online social networking site Twitter. The illustration had been created by Sydney artist Yiying Lu for an electronic birthday card and was picked up from a stock photo site by Twitter founder Biz Stone. Almost instantly the "Fail Whale", as it became known, was adopted by the Twitter community as an icon. Lu became as popular as her creation, winning first place in the Design category of New York's Shorty Awards. Born in Shanghai, Lu got her degree from the University of Technology, Sydney, with a year of exchange study at London's Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design. She has since worked as a design tutor at UTS, as well as establishing an art and design studio. "The next step will be developing 'Yiying Lu' into a brand," she says.

Raymond Choo

Fighting cyber crime was a natural progression for Singapore-born Dr Kim Kwang (Raymond) Choo, who started his working life as an officer in the Singapore Police Force. "I always knew that I would be in some form of public service as I like to help people," says Choo, who has a PhD in IP from Queensland of Technology. Choo spends his days hunting cyber criminals as a research analyst of high tech crime and money laundering at the Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra. He was recently awarded a Fulbright Professional Scholarship tountertake a three-month study at Rutgers University's School of Criminal Justic and the Palo Alto Research Centre, in the United States. "My research aims to contribute to neutralising crime opportunities before they arise," he says.
The Australian

A panel comprising Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey, ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Chubb, former Olympics swimming champion, Lisa Forrest, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations secratary Lisa Paul, demographer Bernard Salt, Australian Industry Group chief Heather Ridout and cancer researcher and Australian of the Year, Professor Ian Frazer, selected the winners.

Unfortunately none of the above won, but with emerging leaders like these I'm sure we will be well represented in the future and hopefully we can also get some nominees in the other categories.