Competition: Youth Literary Awards

Awardee and programme: Kwan Lok-yiu, Master of Arts in Chinese Literature
Award: Second Prize, Literary Criticism (Open Group)
Winning work: “On a Literary Style of Late-Career Kwun Moon-nam: The Illness Metaphor under the
'Shadow of Death'”

Awardee and programme: Wong Ho-ling, Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Chinese
Award: Merit Award, Prose (Senior Group)
Winning work: “Flimsy Stomach”

Details:
Two HKMU graduates received accolades at the 50^th Youth Literary Awards. Kwan Lok-yiu, who graduated with a Master's degree in Chinese Literature, won the second prize in the Literary Criticism section of the Open Group with an article analysing the illness metaphors in the late-career poems of Hong Kong writer Kwun Moon-nam. Noting that Kwun's poems often draw on his personal life experiences, the article demonstrates the poet's contemplation on the body, sickness and death in the face of two major changes in life, namely his mother's death and his own anxiety disorder in terms of narrative shifts, illness metaphors and his experimentation with Cantonese language.

BA in Chinese graduate Wong Ho-ling received a Merit Award in the Prose section of the Senior Group for her work “Flimsy Stomach” (玻璃胃). Written from the first-person retrospective perspective, the non-fiction piece recounts the pains and inconveniences the narrator has suffered since childhood because of her poor stomach. Her struggles and coping — from feeling embarrassed about throwing up in class in primary school to forcing junk food down her stomach in social gatherings during her secondary years, and eventually learning how to treat herself nicely as a university student — parallel her journey of personal growth.

Set up in 1972, the Youth Literary Awards promote literary writing by organising annual competitions and publishing winning works. Along with the Hong Kong Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature and the Awards for Creative Writing in Chinese, the Awards are one of Hong Kong's three major literary contests as well as an important nurturing ground for many established and up-and-coming writers.