Alice Pung is an Australian writer, editor and lawyer. Her books include the memoirs Unpolished Gem, Her Father's Daughter and the novel Laurinda. Pung is a practising solicitor. She has also worked as an art instructor, independent school teacher at primary and secondary schools and is Artist in Residence at Janet Clarke Hall at the University of Melbourne.
Life
Pung was born to ethnic Teochew Chinese parents from Cambodia. Fleeing the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, her parents sought asylum in Australia in 1980. Pung was named Alice after the protagonist of Alice in Wonderland, because her father saw Australia as a wonderland. She was born in the Footscray suburb of Melbourne and grew up in Braybrook. Pung attended five Melbourne schools, including the Catholic junior girls school Christ the King College in Braybrook, Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School and Mac.Robertson Girls' High School. Pung studied law at the University of Melbourne and is a practicing lawyer.
Writing career
Pung's first book, Unpolished Gem, won the 2007 Newcomer of the Year Award in the Australian Book Industry Awards. Her follow-up memoir, Her Father's Daughter, was published in 2011. Her first book for young adults, Laurinda was published in 2014. It was adapted for an American audience in 2016, and a collection of high school students' stories inspired by the novel was published in 2016. Pung has also written the Marly books for the Our Australian Girl children's series. Pung attended the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa as a Resident in 2009. She is a regular writer for The Monthly on topics such as race discrimination, class, cultural stereotypes, and experiences of living in Melbourne, Victoria.
Books
Unpolished Gem
Growing Up Asian in Australia
Laurinda
Our Australian Girl: Meet Marly: Our Australian Girl, illustrated by Lucia Masciullo
Our Australian Girl: Marly's Business, illustrated by Lucia Masciullo
Our Australian Girl: Marly and the Goat, illustrated by Lucia Masciullo
Our Australian Girl: Marly Walks on the Moon, illustrated by Lucia Masciullo
Brewster, Anne Remembering Violence in Alice Pung’s Her Father’s Daughter: The Postmemoir and Diasporisation, Life Writing, 14:3, 313-325, DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2017.1328298
Growing Up Asian in Australia
Graham, Pamela Alice Pung's Growing up Asian in Australia: The Cultural Work of Anthologized Asian-Australian Narratives of Childhood, Prose Studies, 35:1, 67-83, DOI: 10.1080/01440357.2013.781412
Unpolished Gem
Ommundsen, Wenche Writing as Cultural Negotiation: Suneeta Peres da Costa and Alice Pung. In: Collett A., D’Arcens L. The Unsociable Sociability of Women’s Lifewriting. Palgrave Macmillan, London.
D'Arcangelo, Adele. Unpolished Gem/Gemma impura the Journey from Australia to Italy of Alice Pung’s Bestselling Novel. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, , v. 14, n. 1, june. ISSN 1833-6027. Available at: https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/9877.
Awards
''Unpolished Gem''
Winner of the Australian Newcomer of the Year award in the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards
Shortlisted in the Australian Biography of the Year and Australian Book of the Year in the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards
