More than a decade after attracting international acclaim for his debut The Boat, Nam Le has won book of the year at the NSW Literary awards for his follow-up, a book-length poem titled 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem.
Le won the $10,000 top gong as well as the $30,000 NSW multicultural award category, but missed out on the Kenneth Slessor prize for poetry, which went to Lebanese-Palestinian writer Hasib Hourani for another book-length poem, Rock Flight.