YUNNAN — Vietnamese writer Nguyễn Ngọc Tư has been honoured as Best Southeast Asian writer at the 2024 Dianchi Literature Awards ceremony in Yunnan Province, China.

Portrait of writer Nguyễn Ngọc Tư at the 20th Dianchi Literature Awards ceremony. — Photo Nhân Dân (People) newspaper

Tư was honoured for her short story Những Biển (The Seas) in the short story collection titled Cố Định Một Đám Mây (Anchored The Cloud), published by Phanbook and Đà Nẵng Publishing House in 2018.

The story is about Nhi, a woman missing her husband, who is allegedly missing at sea.

"I don't want to waste time getting attached to works that have already been written, but instead devote all my attention to what I am writing and what I will write," Tư said in a speech sent to the organising committee. 

"Even though I don't think about my works very much, I believe they still receive warmth and light – like the day I found out Dianchi magazine had given my short story an award."

Tư was born in 1976 in the southern province of Cà Mau, where she still lives. She has released 30 books in different categories of fiction, short stories and poems, impressing both young and older readers by focusing on the rural life of farmers in her native province. Several of her novels have been translated into Korean, English, German and Swedish. 

The book Cánh Đồng Bất Tận (Endless Fields) is her most famous work, with about 150,000 copies sold. 

With this novel, published in 2018, Tư became the first female Vietnamese writer to win the Liberaturpreis 2018, as voted by Litprom – the Society for the Promotion of Literature from Africa, Asia and Latin America in Frankfurt, Germany.

The Dianchi Literature Awards was established in 2003, founded by Tianchi Literary Magazine and managed by the Kunming Federation of Literature and Arts.

It is awarded annually to literature genres including novels, poetry and prose. The Southeast Asian literature category was established in 2018, with the winner last year being Indonesian Ekagunyawan. — VNS