Spotlight On: Nam Le
Thu, August 21 2008
Name:
Talent:
Thumb-wrestling. Procrastinating. Writing (sometimes).Inspiration:
The more I get to know people — through biography or real life — the more inspired I become. We all face difficult situations. We all continue, and we make sacrifices, and we go on. Every day. Pushed to choose, I’d say I’m most inspired by my parents for the choices and sacrifices they’ve made. It still boggles me.Cultural Background:
I was born in Vietnam and came to Australia when I was less than a year old. My relationship with Vietnam is complex. For a long time I vowed I wouldn’t fall into writing ethnic stories, immigrant stories, etc. Then I realized that not only was I working against these expectations (market, self, literary, cultural), I was working against my kneejerk resistance to such expectations. How I see it now is no matter what or where I write about, I feel a responsibility to the subject matter. Not so much to get it right as to do it justice. Having personal history with a subject only complicates this — but not always, nor necessarily, in bad ways. I don’t completely understand my relationship to Vietnam as a writer. This book is a testament to the fact that I’m becoming more and more okay with that.Future Plans:
Next year I’ll be doing a residency at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, U.K. There I hope to continue work on my next book. After that, things are very much up in the air.Awards:
The Pushcart Prize, the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Phillips Exeter Academy, and the University of East Anglia. The Boat was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award 2008 and is currently longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2008.Advice:
I’m always a bit wary giving advice to aspiring writers; any advice that claims to apply to a set as wide and wacky as all writers seems (to me) by definition uninstructive. That said, I’ll pass on something useful someone once told me: Don’t forget why you love what you do.Favourite Book:
I’m going to wilfully misread your question as asking what the last great book I read was. And that was a non-fiction book by Chloe Hooper called The Tall Man, a brave and wrenching portrait of race relations — and its human involutions relating to a single Aboriginal death in custody — in contemporary Australia. Thought-provoking and heart-breaking.Favorite Author:
W.H. Auden.Next appearance/event:
I’m not sure when this is going to press, so please check out the most updated information on my website, at www.namleonline.com/events.html
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