Nicole Young returned her bronze medal on Wednesday night at a Hanoi ceremony marking 25 years of the Lantern Quill Prize, then named translator Felipe Acosta-Sepúlveda as the uncredited co-author of her award-winning novel. The book, “The River Kept Our Names”, follows families moved for the construction of the fictional An Lac reservoir. Young said the prize’s founders knew the manuscript was collaborative.
Now 62, Young grew up in Khe Vang, a village whose homes were cleared for the reservoir in 1984. She drew on neighbours’ accounts and her own family’s move for the novel, published in 2001. Relatives later stopped speaking to her for years, she said, accusing her of turning their losses into a literary career. “I thought the book had given the village a voice,” she told the audience. “I didn’t understand what my silence was doing.”
The name missing from the cover
Acosta-Sepúlveda, now 67, worked as a translator and editor in Hanoi when the book was written. He said he recorded residents’ recollections, shaped the dialogue and drafted several chapters from Young’s notes. The pair brought a joint manuscript to the prize, he recalled, but agreed to let Young accept the award after organisers said its annual grant could go to only one author.
The prize’s 2001 programme lists Young alone. The award was worth 90 million dong (about €6,000 at the time), and royalty payments went to her, according to account summaries the pair shared with The Plausible Post. Young said she believed Acosta-Sepúlveda’s contribution would be credited in a later edition. It never was; three printings carried the same single byline.
I accepted the medal because I thought his name would be added to the next printing. It never was.
Nicole Young, novelist
Francisca Mercado, 68, was among the Khe Vang residents who attended the ceremony. She said the book’s descriptions of the resettlement felt familiar, but the sole byline had long troubled her. “We recognised Felipe’s work in the voices,” she said. “To see him left out again, on the night they praised the book, was hard to take.”
Prize secretary Pu Sou Khaliq-Gong said the original rules required a single named recipient because the award was tied to a 25-year funding plan. “That condition was treated as an accounting detail. It decided who received credit,” Pu said. The board will meet on 2 November to consider joint awards and a formal correction to the prize’s online catalogue.
A medal returned, a book reconsidered
Acosta-Sepúlveda did not ask Young to surrender the prize money. He said he wanted his name on future editions and a public account of how the credit was decided. “The money was spent a long time ago,” he said. “The story is still being read under a name that leaves me out.” He watched from the front row as Young placed the medal on a table beside her chair.
Gabriela Valencia, the publisher’s managing editor, said a corrected edition could be ready by March if the rights holders agreed on the wording. Young has asked that the new cover name both writers and that a portion of its first print run go to a Khe Vang oral-history project. Valencia said no decision has been made on either request.
After the ceremony, Young and Acosta-Sepúlveda left the converted warehouse together, carrying separate copies of the novel. She said she had returned the medal because keeping it felt like accepting the old version of events. The prize’s anniversary, intended as a celebration, has instead put a long-suppressed question on the next edition’s cover: who wrote the book?
