The decision was made by the Executive Committee of the Vietnam Writers' Association at a meeting on the afternoon of January 20 and announced on the evening of the same day. According to the announcement posted on the Association's website, author Lau Van Mua admitted his mistake, proactively applied to withdraw from the award, and at the same time took full personal responsibility and considered this a profound lesson in the literary creation process.
Previously, the Vietnam Writers' Association Award 2025 was announced on January 19. Poet Lau Van Mua was one of the three authors to receive the Young Author Award with the poetry collection "Picking up my body and stacking it on a museum".
However, immediately after the results were announced, some critics and readers pointed out many signs that the work had content similar to foreign poetry.
Accordingly, the poem "When Memories Cry" is said to be almost translated from the work "When Memories Cry!" by Indian poet Jyoti Joseph, published on PoemHunter since 2009. In addition, the poem "The Past" was also found to have many passages that coincide with the poem "The Past" by author Ananya Sarkar.
Detailed comparisons show that the structure, images and emotional flow in Lau Van Mua's poems have a high degree of similarity with the original English version, from the way ideas are deployed to the expressive language, leading to the conclusion of violating the judging regulations.
Lau Van Mua was born in 1992, is a Mong ethnic person, from Muong Lat district, Thanh Hoa province. This author started writing poetry from 8th grade, and participated in youth literary creation training classes in mountainous areas organized by the Thanh Hoa Provincial Literature and Arts Association in 2015 and youth creation camps of the Vietnam Association of Ethnic Minorities Literature and Arts in 2016.
Before "Nhat xac em chat chong bao tang", he published the poetry collection "Toi bay vao mat em" (2017) and participated in some poetry publications printed together.
The Vietnam Writers' Association Award is held annually since 1999, to honor typical works in many genres such as prose, poetry, critical theory, children's literature and translated literature.
This year, in addition to the case of Lau Van Mua, the remaining two Young Author Awards were awarded to Cao Viet Quynh with the novel "Land of Dragons" and Nguyen Thi Kim Nhung with two poetry collections "Dan sang".
