Foreign lands a winner for writers Annah Faulkner, left, and Lily Chan in Sydney yesterday. Picture: Renee Nowytarger Source: TheAustralian LILY Chan grew up wanting to be Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice. So the Kyoto-born, rural West Australian-raised, Melbourne-based writer appreciates the complexity of winning an Australian literary award for a memoir about her Japanese grandmother. "One of the ironies of writing a book that was going to be tagged 'Asian-Australian' is that I have always wanted to be white," Chan said yesterday, after receiving the $5000 Dobbie Literary Award for a debut female writer for Toyo: A Memoir. I wanted to capture this remarkable woman in my life . . . someone I didn't pay enough attention to the first time around. The associated Kibble Literary Award, worth $30,000, went to another debutante, Queensland writer Annah Faulkner, for The Beloved, a novel set largely in post-colonial Papua New Guinea, where the author grew up. The Kibble award, celebrating its 20th year, was established by Nita Dobbie in honour of the aunt who raised her, Nita Kibble, the first female librarian at the State Library of NSW. Dobbie also worked as a librarian. Both Chan and Faulkner emphasised the importance of libraries, albeit at different times in their lives. "I grew up in a library, it was a more real world to me than my actual world," said Chan, 27, who was raised in the wheatbelt. Faulkner said libraries were not as important to her when she was young, but today "are incredibly exciting places." "There is nothing you can't find in a library," she said. Faulkner said Australia's relationship with PNG, back in the headlines due to Kevin Rudd's asylum-seeker plan, was underrepresented in literature.