One of the world’s richest and most innovative literary awards is to be launched later this year—and will be judged by a Sri Lankan author.

The revolutionary AALA prize, worth more than US$100,000, is open to cutting-edge novels designed to be read on mobile phones, as well as traditional books.

The award is open to publishers worldwide, without the geographical restrictions of most other awards.

Hong Kong crime writer Nury Vittachi, a columnist with The Island, will chair the panel of judges for the new prize, which will be given to a story set in Asia-Pacific.

The full name of the AALA is the Western Australian Premier’s Australia-Asia Literary Award. Winners will receive a cash payment of A$110,000 (US$103,000), making the prize far larger than the US$10,000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and putting it in the same league as the UK’s Man Booker Prize, which also stands at about US$100,000, depending on exchange rates. 

"This is a fabulous vote of confidence," said Vittachi, who is chairing a three-strong judging panel. "It shows that while the West may have dominated popular culture up to now, it is time for world-class creativity from the eastern side of the planet to take its rightful place on the global stage."

The Sri Lanka-born author will be joined by Kamila Shamsie, a Karachi-born author who judged the UK’s Orange Prize for Fiction, and a third judge, shortly to be announced.

Initial details of the award were revealed in Perth, Australia, by Mr Vittachi and Alan Carpenter, Premier of Western Australia.  The prize has been financed by the government of Western Australia as part of a major spending programme to make the area under its jurisdiction a regional hub for the arts. Entries for the new award are invited immediately, with the winner of the inaugural prize to be announced in the fall of this year. Entry forms are available on the Internet, at: www.dca.wa.gov.au. The closing date for books for this year is May 31.

In Japan, many of the recent top bestsellers were written on mobile phones and designed to be read on tiny screens. But while the new award is open to books published in new media formats, it excludes self-published works, thus avoiding vanity publishing projects.

Book industry executives in Asia and Australia see the new prize as an Asia-Pacific "Booker" and are enthusiastic about the message it presents to the world. Writing from Asians and Australians has made major inroads into world culture in recent years, with authors such as Thomas Keneally and Kiran Desai winning major awards.

While the Man Booker Prize is arguably the world’s best known literary prize, it is limited to authors from the British Commonwealth and Ireland. A related prize, the Man Booker International Award, does not have geographical limitations, but is presented for a body of work, not for a specific book. The same is true for the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is for a single book, but is open to US authors only. In cash terms, the richest award is the IMPAC, a 100,000 Euro award presented in Dublin for books nominated by libraries around the world.

The Kiriyama Prize is sometimes described as an Asian book award, but is actually a US prize, limited to Asia-themed books from North American publishing houses. Purely Asian book prizes do exist, but are generally very limited in scope, language range, cash size and publicity level.

literaryawards@dca.wa.gov.au

To speak to someone about the award, contact: Shauna Weeks (press officer),

Department of Culture and the Arts, Level 7, 573 Hay Street, Perth, Western Australia, WA 6000

Tel. +61 8 9224 7327

To speak to the chair of the judging panel, contact: Nury Vittachi,

P504 Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

nury@vittachi.com