AustLit
Writer and lawyer Alice Pung was born in Footscray, Victoria, and grew up in Braybrook, attending local primary and secondary schools in the Western suburbs of Melbourne. Her parents are Teochew Chinese from Cambodia, who sought refuge in Australia in 1980 after fleeing the Khmer Rouge.
Pung was educated in a number of Melbourne schools, including what was then Christ the King College (now Christ the King Primary school and Caroline Chisholm Catholic College), a Catholic girls' school. A qualified lawyer, she still undertakes work as a legal researcher in the areas of minimum wages and pay equity.
Pung worked extensively with both primary and secondary school students, as an art instructor, independent school teacher, and student mentor. she has been Writer in Residence and pastoral care adviser at Janet Clarke Hall, the University of Melbourne. In the wake of her young-adult novel Laurinda, she compiled and edited a collection of short stories by Australian secondary-school students influenced the themes of the novel, in My First Lesson.
Pung's work has been widely taught in Australian universites, particularly the memoir Unpolished Gem and the edited collected Growing Up Asian in Australia. Among her awards are the Ethel Turner Prize (NSW Premier's Literary Awards), the Western Australian Premier's Award (non-fiction), and the ABIA Award for Newcomer of the Year. She has also been shortlisted for awards such as the Colin Roderick Award, the 'Nib', the Age Book of the Year Award, the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction (NSW Premier's Literary Awards), and the Barbara Jefferis Award. Laurinda was longlisted for the Stella Prize, which has never yet been won by a young-adult novel.
In addition to work individually indexed on AustLit, her work has also appeared widely in Australian periodicals, including Meanjin.
— Appears in: Bully for Them : Outstanding Australians on Hard Lessons Learned at School Mulgrave : Affirm Press , 2014 2014 (p. 141-154) y
— Appears in: Liminal , July 2021 2021 y
— Appears in: The Age , 11 August 2007 2007 (p. 11) y
— Appears in: Peril : An Asian Australian Journal , November no. 4 2007 2007 y
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 25-31 January 2020 2020 y
— Appears in: Buzz Words , November 2014 2014 y
— Appears in: Buzz Words , December 2014 2014 y
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 12-18 June 2021 2021 y
— Appears in: The Asian Review of Books 2021 2021 y
— Appears in: Peril : An Asian-Australian Journal , August no. 34 2018 2018 y
— Appears in: The Age , 21 December 2010 2010 (p. 4-5) y
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian Magazine , 20-21 September 2008 2008 (p. 32) y
— Appears in: Good Weekend , 22 December 2007 2007 (p. 33, 35) y
— Appears in: The Age , 26 August 2006 2006 (p. 13) y
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 5 February 2012 2012 (p. 3) y
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 370 2015 2015 y
— Appears in: ABC News [Online] , February 2020 2020 y
— Appears in: Quarterly Literary Review Singapore , January vol. 11 no. 1 2012 2012 y
— Appears in: Sunday Life , 27 January 2013 2013 (p. 30) y
— Appears in: Life Writing , vol. 14 no. 4 2017 2017 (p. 465-474) y
— Appears in: Creative Constraints : Translation and Authorship Clayton : Monash University Publishing , 2012 2012 (p. 89-101) y
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , December no. 27 2021 2021 y
— Appears in: Life Writing , vol. 14 no. 3 2017 2017 (p. 313-325) y
— Appears in: The Unsociable Sociability of Women's Lifewriting Houndmills : Palgrave Macmillan , 2010 2010 (p. 187-203) y
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , no. 42 2017 2017 y
— Appears in: Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism , vol. 35 no. 1 2013 2013 (p. 67-83) y
— Appears in: The Conversation , 16 August 2022 2022 y
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 1 2014 2014 y
— Appears in: The Conversation , 30 October 2020 2020 y
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 11 December 2023 2023 y
— Appears in: The Conversation , 20 February 2017 2017 y
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 30 May 2021 2021 y
— Appears in: The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture , September vol. 7 no. 2 2018 2018 (p. 255-272) y
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , May vol. 2 no. 2 2010 2010 y
— Appears in: Telling Tales : Autobiographies of Childhood and Youth United Kingdom (UK) : Routledge Taylor & Francis Group , 2015 2015
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 22 - 23 September 2007 2007 (p. 23) y
— Appears in: Voice , 12 September - 9 October vol. 7 no. 9 2011 2011 y