N.L. author William Ping's debut novel longlisted for €100K international prize
Elizabeth Whitten | CBC News | Posted: January 17, 2024 5:21 PM | Last Updated: January 17, 2024
Hollow Bamboo is up for the Dublin Literary Prize, which will be awarded in May
Newfoundland and Labrador author William Ping has been keeping a secret since July: his debut novel, Hollow Bamboo, has been longlisted for the prestigious Dublin Literary Prize.
The annual award recognizes the best work of fiction in English from anywhere in the world and comes with a prize of 100,000 euros (about $147,000 Cdn).
Ping said he was at home working on a new novel when he was told he'd been longlisted. It helped inspire him to keep working on his followup book, he said, but he couldn't talk about it until the list was publicly revealed this week.
"When I first got the news, I was just so excited. I was really jumping up and down," said Ping, who is also a newsreader and journalist with CBC News.
"Usually nothing ever excites me," he said with a chuckle. "I was really pleased. It was really quite the honour."
Hollow Bamboo, based on a true story in Ping's family, is about the Chinese immigrant experience in the province.
The short list is scheduled to be announced March 26, with the winner announced May 23.
Global literary stage
Ping started Hollow Bamboo while working for his master of arts in English degree from Memorial University. The book has already won the 2022 Cox & Palmer Creative Writing Award and the 2021 Landfall Trust award. It was also nominated for the 2023 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.
"I never expected it to be so well received, really," said Ping. "When I started writing, I really thought that a couple of my friends would read it, maybe my parents, and that would be it."
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Since then, he said, the book has seen a huge national pickup and he's been able with connect with readers across the country. With the Dublin Literary Award nomination, he said, it's reaching an international audience.
Ping said he can't say why readers have connected with the book but he wrote it with a mixture of humour about a serious subject matter.
"I think readers have really connected to the balance of humour in that work. And I think Newfoundlanders are just great storytellers to begin with. So I think people across the country, when they see Newfoundland, they're excited to pick up the book and read."
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