VietNamNet Bridge - Tim Napper from Hanoi, Vietnam was honored Sunday night, April 12, at the 31st Annual L. Ron Hubbard Achievement awards at the prestigious Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, California.

The event celebrated the annual winners in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contests, where Tim was one of the twelve writer winners making it further than some several thousand others who entered the international competition, and where he saw his story published in the bestselling Science Fiction anthology series – L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 31 now available online at Amazon.com, Kobo.com and BN.com and soon to be available in print wherever books are sold.

Tim Napper is an Australian from a quiet country town currently living in the “City of Noise”: Hanoi, Vietnam.

In 2002, Tim worked for a year as a volunteer in Mongolia, managing a project to support street children. International aid work became his profession after this, and he spent the subsequent 11 years living and working throughout Asia. He lived in Laos for three years, implementing programs that provided basic education to the poorest children in the country, and has also worked in Burma, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

While a voracious reader of science fiction since he was a young boy, Tim only began writing fiction two years ago. He is a fan of Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin and Kurt Vonnegut, and has a particular obsession with the movie Blade Runner.

Tim has eased back on his regular job to devote himself to writing and to raising his three-year-old son. Sometimes they have been known to dress up in Star Trek costumes and pilot the couch spaceship on dangerous missions while mum is at work.

Each writing and illustrating contest winner was presented their trophy by contest judges at the ceremony and combined cash prizes and royalties of over $30,000, and their story with artwork published in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Volume 31.

The Writers of the Future writing contest (www.writersofthefuture.com) was initiated by L. Ron Hubbard in 1983 to provide a means for aspiring writers to get that much-needed break. Due to the success of the Writing Contest, the companion Illustrators of the Future Contest was created in 1988.

The intensive mentoring process has proven very successful. The 368 past winners of the Writing Contest have published 838 novels and nearly 4,000 short stories. They have produced 27 New York Times bestsellers and their works have sold over 50 million copies.

The 298 past winners of the Illustrators Contest have produced over 4,500 illustrations, 356 comic books, graced 594 books and albums with their art and visually contributed to 36 TV shows and 46 major movies.

T. Van