Alice Pung is a writer, editor and lawyer. She wrote the memoir Unpolished Gem and edited Growing Up Asian in Australia

Growing up Asian in Australia

Growing up Asian in Australia is an anthology of personal accounts, essays, short stories and poetry edited by Alice Pung. The discourse of "Asians" in Australia is similar to that in America and usually includes people of East Asian "oriental" background such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese or...

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She is a practicing solicitor, and has worked as an art instructor, independent school teacher at primary and secondary schools and is Artist in Residence at at Janet Clarke Hall, the University of Melbourne

University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...

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Life

Pung was born in Footscray

Footscray, Victoria

Footscray is a suburb 5 km west of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Its Local Government Area is the City of Maribyrnong. At the 2006 Census, Footscray had a population of 11,401....

 and grew up in Braybrook, attending local schools including Christ the King College, a Catholic school for girls. Alice's parents are Chinese who immigrated to Cambodia then fled to Australia as asylum seekers.

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.

Alice has attended the International Writing Program

International Writing Program

The International Writing Program is a writing residency for international artists in Iowa City, Iowa. Since its inception in 1967, the IWP has hosted over 1,100 emerging and established poets, novelists, dramatists, essayists, and journalists from more than 120 countries...

at the University of Iowa.