Bibliofemme News
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01/03/2006
Frank O'Connor prize-winner on Kiriyama Prize shortlist
Chinese author Yiyun Li, the winner of last year's inaugural Frank O'Connor
International Short Story Award, is on the shortlist for the Kiriyama Prize.
The Kiriyama Prize is an annual award that recognises outstanding books that
promote greater understanding of and among the nations of the Pacific Rim
and of South Asia.
There are ten finalists for the annual prize, and two winners - one for
fiction and one for non-fiction - will be named on 28 March.
Li is shortlisted in the fiction category for her Frank O'Connor
Award-winning book of short stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.
Jess Row's short story collection, The Train to Lo Wu, is also nominated,
along with three novels: Canadian author Karen Connelly's novel The Lizard
Cage; The Hungry Tide, a novel by Calcutta-born author Amitav Ghosh; and
Luis Alberto Urrea's The Hummingbird's Daughter.
In the non-fiction category, the finalists include: Isami's House by Gail
Lee Bernstein; Crossing Three Wildernesses, poet U Sam Oeur's memoir of his
Cambodia childhood; A Man With No Talents' by Oyama Shiro (translated by
Edward Fowler); The Golden Spruce by author John Vaillant; and The Reindeer
People by Piers Vitebsky.
Li grew up in Beijing before moving to the United States in 1996 where she
now lives with her husband and their two sons. Her petition for permanent
residency in the United States on the grounds of "extraordinary ability in
the arts" was turned down earlier this month.
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