SEA Write Award 2002

Every October the S.E.A. Write Awards are given out at The Oriental Hotel. The name of the award stands for Southeast Asian Writers Awards which are designed to honour leading poets and writers in the ASEAN region. The ten countries which comprise the ASEAN region are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The awards were first given out in 1979 to encourage writers in the ASEAN countries and to bring recognition to the creative literary talents of the region.

The 2002 Thai S.E.A Write Awardee was Prabda Yoon. He was born in Bangkok in 1973 and at the age of 14 went to the USA for his studies where he remained for 11 years.

Prabda received his BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Sciences, New York City, in 1997, and returned to Thailand the following year.

Since 1999, Prabda has been working prolifically as a writer. He has written regularly for several leading Thai-language magazines. His first short story collection entitled ‘Muang Moon Chak’ (City of Right Angles) was an immediate bestseller and was widely praised as an innovative work that brought a new flavour to the Thai literary scene.

‘Kwam Na Ja Pen’ (Probability), his second short story collection, for which he won the 2002 S.E.A. Write Awards, was published soon after. Prabda has also published in the past two years, three more collections. Two books of essays, one film criticism, and a film script.

Probability was written in Thai but here is a translation of an expert to give a taste of Prabda’s style;

“How could one and one make two? Wait. If there was one, then where did the other one come from, and why should they be added together? That’s quiet a riddle in itself. Suppose that Father was one, plus Mother, another one, the sum would evidently be three, since I was born out of the union between those two, making it three. It could be further surmised that the union between Father and Mother would not end here. If I later had a brother or sister there would be four. Then if there was another brother or sister there would be five. Suppose if one were was a tiger and the other one a rabbit; if they were put together, the tiger would eat the rabbit and only one would be left. Suppose that one was a drop of mercury, plus one, another drop of mercury, two drops of mercury would become one big.Then it would be one again……”

I recently met Prabda and interviewed him for the cover story of the October issue of Thailand Timeout. Some has criticized Prabda’s choice of language being to abstract. In his defense he feels that language is an abstract art. “I am not to serious about the award,” Prabda reveals, “its nice but its not really a part of me. Some of my friends tease me a little saying like now I will have to write a political novel.”