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Vijay Prashad's The Darker Nations Wins 2008 Asian American Literary Award for Nonfiction
Mohsin Hamid, Vijay Prashad and Sun Yung Shin are among the winners of the 11th Annual Asian American Literary Awards, to be presented by the Asian American Writers' Workshop at a ceremony on December 8. The event is scheduled to be held from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Film Center at New York University, 36 East 8th Street, New York. A VIP reception will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Deutsches Haus at NYU, 2 Washington Mews, New York.
Mohsin Hamid receives the fiction award for "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" (Harcourt), the story of Changez, a Pakistani who goes to America to get a good education and make money, and ends in violence.
The nonfiction award goes to Vijay Prashad for "The Darker Nations" (New Press). Subtitled "A People's History of the Third World," the narrative spans every continent of the global South, taking readers from the birth of post colonial nations after World War II to the downfall and corruption of nationalist regimes.
Sun Yung Shin wins the poetry award for "Skirt Full of Black" (Coffee House Press), her first collection of poems, which explores the tension between spoken and written language, written and typed characters, and human and technological voices.
The Workshop will also present a Lifetime Achievement Award to Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the play M. Butterfly. He will be reunited with Law & Order actor B.D. Wong in a special reading and conversation with Oskar Eustis, the Artistic Director of The Public Theater.
Previous winners of the Asian American Literary Awards include Amitav Ghosh, Ha Jin and Meera Nair.
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