October 22, 2001

PATRICIA GRACE AND PETER HESSLER WIN US $30,000 KIRIYAMA PRIZE
2001 Winners Announced October 20 at the Vancouver International Writers Festival

San Francisco - The 6th annual Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize for fiction was awarded October 20 to highly regarded Maori writer Patricia Grace for her fifth novel, Dogside Story (Penguin Books New Zealand and The Women's Press UK). American journalist Peter Hessler received the nonfiction Prize for his memoir, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (HarperCollins, New York). The two authors will share the US$30,000 award.

The announcement of the winners was the finale of a two-hour long event at the Vancouver International Writers Festival. Sedge Thomson, host of West Coast Live, an internationally syndicated radio program aired on National Public Radio affiliates in the States, moderated the event and broadcast it live from Vancouver for the occasion. Highlights from the October 20 program were also aired on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's North by Northwest.

The Festival event and broadcast featured an interview with Australian author Nicholas Jose (The Custodians), who served as a judge for the 2001 Kiriyama Prize for fiction. Jose joked that he flew to Vancouver "to prove that the Pacific Rim covers a lot of territory." In speaking about the significance the judges' decision, Jose commented, " These books will enter the dialogue around the Pacific and around the world thanks to this Prize."

Six Australian books were designated as Kiriyama Prize "notable books for 2001" in September. They are: Peter Carey's The True History of the Kelly Gang (University of Queensland Press), Ben Rice's Pobby and Dingan (Random House Australia), Kate Lyon's The Water Underneath (Allen & Unwin), Linda Jaivin's The Monkey and the Dragon (Text Publishing), Peter Mares's Borderline: Australia's Treatment of Refugees and Asylum Seekers, and Kate Walsh's The Changing Face of Australia (Allen & Unwin).

Dogside Story is a deeply moving story set in a poor coastal town in New Zealand Aotearoa. With great warmth, compassion, and humor, Grace shows how the tenacious Maori community has been divided by the effects of colonialism and cultural oppression, but also how its people are bound together by strong traditions. Dogside speaks not only to the culture of the Maori, but also to analogous circumstances of indigenous peoples in many parts of the Pacific Rim. Barbara Bundy, coadministrator of the Kiriyama Prize said, "We are greatly pleased to have this opportunity to help bring the work of Patricia Grace, who is already well-known in her home country, to the wider attention of readers around the world." Dogside Story was also longlisted for the Booker Prize in August.

Peter Hessler wrote his winning memoir, River Town, following a two-year sojourn in Fuling, a small community in central China, where he taught literature in the Peace Corps. Hessler's lively narrative allows the authentic voices of his rural Chinese students to ring through clearly as he tells about his own adjustment to life in China. With intelligence, affection and keen insight, Hessler provides a vivid and fresh look at modern China during a time of social and cultural transition. River Town, said author Gay Talese, "is really a literary bridge that links us with the Chinese people in ways that transcend our political and cultural differences and allow us to experience in human terms the undeniable commonality that can and does exist in a divided world."

"The need for greater intercultural understanding and tolerance has never been clearer than it has been in recent weeks," said Peter J. Coughlan, president of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Institute (KPRI), cosponsor of the award with the University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim. "I believe that both of the outstanding books our judges chose this year will further mutual understanding among the peoples and nations of the Pacific Rim and South Asia, which is the ultimate goal of the Kiriyama Prize," Coughlan added. In addition to the prize, KPRI also sponsors public programming and Pacific Rim Voices (www.pacificrimvoices.org), an online resource for books on the Pacific region.

The Kiriyama Book Prize was established in 1996 and was originally awarded annually to one winning book. To acknowledge the growing quantity and diversity of books entered for the prize, both a fiction and a nonfiction winner have been chosen since 1999.

The other 2001 fiction finalists were The Ash Garden by Dennis Bock (Toronto: HarperCollins); Here's to You, Jesusa!, by Elena Poniatowska, translated by Deanna Heikkinen (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux); American Son, by Brian Ascalon Roley (New York: WW Norton); and The Death of Vishnu, by Manil Suri (New York: WW Norton).

The other 2001 nonfiction finalists were Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Ghandi, by Katherine Frank (London: HarperCollins UK and forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin, New York); Red Dust: A Path Through China, by Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew (UK: Chatto & Windus and forthcoming from Pantheon, New York); Inside Passage: A Journey Beyond Borders, by Richard Manning (Washington, DC: Island Press/Shearwater Books); and Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor Yongle, by Shih-Shan Henry Tsai (Seattle: University of Washington Press).

The 2001 winners were chosen by panels of fiction and nonfiction judges, who selected five finalists in each genre on September 22 from among the 301 eligible entries submitted for the 2001 Prize from publishers worldwide, including 28 entries from Australian publishers.

Canadian authors swept the Kiriyama Prize in 2000 with Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost and Michael David Kwan's Things That Must Not Be Forgotten winning the fiction and nonfiction Prize, respectively. An Australian writer has not yet won the prize, but Simone Lazaroo of Fremantle was a finalist for the award in 2000 for her novel The Australian FiancÙ (Picador/Pan Macmillan Australia). The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders, edited by Donald Denoon, (Cambridge University Press Australia) was a 1996 finalist.

For information on the Kiriyama Book Prize, visit www.pacificrimvoices.org or call prize manager Jeannine Cuevas at (415) 777 1628.

PRESS CONTACT
Jeannine Cuevas
415/777 1628
jeannine@pacificrimvoices.org