Ubud Writers and Readers Festival Special Series: Episode 52: Nam Le

Secrets from the Green Room

In a special series direct from the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival Nam Le chats with Irma about why his first unpublished novel was a spectacular failure but still worthwhile, why for a long time he was a secret writer and the renowned Iowa Writers Workshop was him ‘coming out’ to the world, how he naively thought the crazy success of The Boat was what all writers experienced, why Nam made a pact with himself that he would find the good in every publicity question, how his publisher felt about him wanting to publish a poetry collection – notoriously the smallest selling genre – and why he had to fight for the book in the US market, the ways in which he is wrestling with his cultural identity and the notion that he must represent a particular voice, why he puts so much pressure on himself as a writer, the good and the bad of the writers’ room on film and TV projects, and how self-doubt can become damaging.
ABOUT NAM LE
Nam Le burst onto the literary scene in 2008 with his collection of short fiction, The Boat, which was translated into 14 languages and won every prize imaginable, including the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award. It was also selected as a New York Times Notable Book and named book of the year by everyone from The Guardian to The Australian. Since then Nam has published a monograph, On David Malouf, as part of the Writers on Writers series, and most recently a collection of poetry, 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem. He has also written for film and television.