Atsiri Thammachot

Who is Atsiri Thammachot?

Atsiri Thammachot, winner of the Southeast Asian Writers Award in 1981 for the short story Khun-Thong you will return at dawn, was born on 10 July 1947 in the Hua Hin district of Prachuap Khiri Khan to a family that fished the waters of the Gulf of Thailand for a living. He attended school in Hua Hin until his father lost his fishing boat at sea, at which point the family mortgaged the house and land so that the father could purchase another one, which he then lost at sea soon after. Before entering study in the department of Communication Arts at Chulalongkorn University in 2513, and after finishing up his secondary education in Bangkok, a brief biography in khɔ̀ɔp fáa thá-lee kwâaŋ notes that Thammachot worked for the National Statistics Office in the provinces of Sakon Nakhon, Nakhon Phanom, and Phetchabun for two years, which is noted to be a time that allowed him to become informed of the problems facing communities in rural areas. Part of the reason for his going to work for the NSO were the difficult financial circumstances his family was confronting with respect to the fishery bringing in insufficient income.

In the prelude to his work, dèk phûu-jǐŋ khon kɛ̀ɛ mɛɛw lɛ́? phǒm, it is noted that while surveying for the NSO Thammachot went to villages with three hundred households or more, where beyond fulfilling his role of collecting data for the census he was able to communicate with household members on a variety of subjects, gaining first-hand accounts to learn of the particular challenges and obstacles facing these groups of people, and building up a more well defined sense of life in Isan and the north.