Prabda Yoon (; ; born 2 August 1973 in

Bangkok Bangkok, officially known in Thai language, Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estim ...

) is a Thai writer, novelist, filmmaker, artist,

graphic designer A graphic designer is a practitioner who follows the discipline of graphic design, either within companies or organizations or independently. They are professionals in design and visual communication, with their primary focus on transforming ...

, magazine editor, screenwriter, translator and media personality. His literary debut, ''Muang Moom Shak'' (''City of Right Angles''), a collection of five related stories about New York City, and the follow-up story collection, ''Kwam Na Ja Pen'' (''Probability''), both published in 2000, immediately turned him into "...the talk of the town..." In 2002, ''Kwam Na Ja Pen'' won the

S.E.A. Write Award The S.E.A. Write Award, or Southeast Asian Writers Award, is an award that is presented annually since 1979 to poets and writers of Southeast Asia. The awards are given to the writers from each of the countries comprised in the Association of S ...

, an award presented to accomplished Southeast Asian writers and poets. Prabda has been prolific, having written over 20 books of fiction and nonfiction in ten years, designed over 100 book covers for many publishers and authors, translated a number of modern Western classics such as

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...

's ''

Lolita ''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The protagonist and narrator is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. He details his obsession ...

'' and ''Pnin'', all of

J. D. Salinger Jerome David Salinger ( ; January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010) was an American author best known for his 1951 novel '' The Catcher in the Rye''. Salinger published several short stories in '' Story'' magazine in 1940, before serving in World Wa ...

's books,

Anthony Burgess John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993) who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer. Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his Utopian and dystopian fiction, dy ...

's' ''

A Clockwork Orange ''A Clockwork Orange'' may refer to: * ''A Clockwork Orange'' (novel), a 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess ** ''A Clockwork Orange'' (film), a 1971 film directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel *** ''A Clockwork Orange'' (soundtrack), the film ...

'', and

Karel Čapek Karel Čapek (; 9 January 1890 – 25 December 1938) was a Czech writer, playwright, critic and journalist. He has become best known for his science fiction, including his novel '' War with the Newts'' (1936) and play '' R.U.R.'' (''Rossum' ...

's '' R.U.R.'' He has also written two acclaimed screenplays for Thai "new wave" filmmaker Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, "

Last Life in the Universe ''Last Life in the Universe'' () is a 2003 Thai romantic crime film directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang. The film is notable for being trilingual; the two main characters flit from Thai to Japanese to English as their vocabulary requires. The fil ...

" (2003) and " Invisible Waves" (2006). Prabda's literary work has been translated to Japanese and published in Japan regularly. He has exhibited his artworks (paintings, drawings, installations) in Thailand and Japan. He has also produced music and written songs with the bands Buahima and The Typhoon Band. In 2004, Prabda founded Typhoon Studio, a small publishing house with two imprints, Typhoon Books and Sunday Afternoon. In 2012, he opened Bookmoby Readers' Cafe, a small bookshop at the

Bangkok Art and Culture Centre Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC; ) is a contemporary arts centre in Siam area, Bangkok, Thailand. Art, music, theatre, film, design and cultural/educational events take place in its exhibition and performance spaces. The centre includes caf ...

. In 2015, Prabda wrote and directed his first feature film, " Motel Mist", which was selected to premiere and compete at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2016. '' The Sad Part Was'', a collection of twelve short stories mostly taken from Prabda's ''Kwam Na Ja Pen'' in English, translated from Thai by Mui Poopoksakul (who won an English PEN Award for her translation), was published by the London-based independent publisher, Tilted Axis, and released in the UK on 3 March 2017. It is said to be the first translation of Thai fiction to be published in the UK. He received the 2021 Fukuoka Prize in Arts and Culture.

Family and education

Prabda is the son of the well known Thai media personality Suthichai Sae-Yoon, cofounder of ''The Nation'' newspaper, and former magazine editor and novelist Nantawan Sae-Yoon, both of Bangkok. He has one younger sister, Shimboon "Kit" Yoon, who lives with her family in the US. Prabda completed his elementary school education in Bangkok, then attended high school at the Cambridge School of Weston in Weston,

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. He went to

Parsons School of Design The Parsons School of Design is a private art and design college under The New School located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art ...

in Manhattan, New York City, for two years, studying communication design, and four more years at the

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known as Cooper Union, is a private college on Cooper Square in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-s ...

, where he studied graphic design under Dan Friedman and

Milton Glaser Milton Glaser (June 26, 1929June 26, 2020) was an American graphic designer, recognized for his designs, including the I Love New York logo; a 1966 poster for Bob Dylan; the logos for DC Comics, Stony Brook University, Brooklyn Brewery; and his ...

and film with Robert Breer. He graduated from Cooper Union in 1997. Prabda returned to Thailand in 1998 for military service.

Works

Short stories

* Right-angled City * Probability * Flood in the Eyes * The Moving Parts * This Really happened * The Shoulders of Mountains * Cleaning the Dead * Ancient Planet * *

Novels

* Chit-tak!, 2002 * Panda, 2004 * Lessons in Rain, 2005 * Under the Snow, 2006

Essays

* Unstill Pictures * Water for the Skull * Please Don't Read, Carefully * Alive: On the Breath of Words * Imagined Landscapes * Page Zero * Hitting the Eyes * Writing to Japan * Music with Tears

Screenplays

* Last Life in the Universe, with Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, 2003 * Invisible Waves, 2006 * Motel Mist, 2015

References

External links

Teh, David, "Picking up the pieces", ''Bangkok Post'', (2005-12-24)

Typhoon Studio
*

RMA 2016 interviews Prabda Yoon on ''Motel Mist''

Prabda Yoon speaking at Creative Morning, Turin, 2018
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yoon, Prabda Prabda Yoon Prabda Yoon Prabda Yoon 1973 births Living people S.E.A. Write Award winners Cooper Union alumni Prabda Yoon Prabda Yoon Prabda Yoon Prabda Yoon 21st-century novelists 20th-century translators 21st-century translators Prabda Yoon Prabda Yoon