Alice Pung

Welcome to the official Alice Pung website.

Please take a moment to look around.

You’ll find information on books, articles, events, teachers’ notes, awards, useful links and more. You can even post a message. We particularly welcome feedback from those students and teachers who are using Alice’s work in the classroom. It’s a great way to share ideas.

Alice’s memoir Unpolished Gem has been a favourite at writers’ festivals around the country and has been shortlisted for several awards.

It was winner of the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards Newcomer of the Year, and was selected for the 2007 Books Alive Great Reads Guide.

Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club, has praised the book, saying
“Alice Pung is a gem. Her voice is the real thing.”

For more information on the book, please go here

Unpolished Gem is available in all good bookshops nationally in Australia and New Zealand. Please visit the Black Inc. website for a list of Booksellers if you prefer to shop online.

You can watch Alice discussing her memoir at the Mildura Writers’ Festival here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).

Alice’s latest work is Growing up Asian in Australia, an honest, moving and often hilarious collection of stories about growing up Asian, and Australian. Contributors to the collection include Jenny Kee, Jason Yat-Sen Li, Caroline Tran, Quan Yeomans, Shaun Tan, Annette Shun Wah, Christopher Cyrill, Simone Lazaroo, Anh and Khoa Do, Vanessa Woods, Tom Cho, Hoa Pham, Sunil Badami, Shalini Akhil and many more. See Books for further detail. Please click here to watch the launch at the Sydney Writers’ Festival.