{"id":65338,"date":"2016-10-21T16:57:23","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T05:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=65338"},"modified":"2016-10-25T11:59:42","modified_gmt":"2016-10-25T00:59:42","slug":"child-soldier-refugee-lawyer-deng-thiak-adut-announced-nsw-state-finalist-2017-australian-year-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2016\/10\/21\/child-soldier-refugee-lawyer-deng-thiak-adut-announced-nsw-state-finalist-2017-australian-year-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Child Soldier. Refugee. Lawyer: Deng Thiak Adut announced as NSW State Finalist in 2017 Australian of the Year Awards."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/songs-of-a-war-boy-deng-thiak-adut\/prod9780733636523.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-65359\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Blog-image-Exclusive_4.jpg\" alt=\"blog-image-exclusive_4\" width=\"663\" height=\"255\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Not many people have led the life Deng Adut has, and it\u2019s for this reason he\u2019s been announced as this year\u2019s NSW State Finalist in the Australian of the Year Awards.<\/p>\n<p>It was in September last year when Deng\u2019s life story began to go viral. Presented in a YouTube video promoting Western Sydney University, we learn that at age six he was taken from his mother in South Sudan, marched 33 days to Ethiopia, and conscripted into the Sudanese People\u2019s Liberation Army, whereby he was trained to use an AK-47 and sent into battle.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t until he was 12 that Deng was rescued by his brother, John. Hidden in the back of a truck, he was smuggled out of Sudan, into Kenya, and was eventually brought to Australia as a refugee by the United Nations. Whilst working in a local service station, Deng taught himself to read and started studying at TAFE. In 2005 he enrolled in a Bachelor of Law degree at Western Sydney University and became the first person in his family to graduate from university.<\/p>\n<p>Deng gave this year\u2019s<a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/national\/transcript-deng-thiak-aduts-australia-day-speech-20160121-gmau63.html\" target=\"_blank\"> Australia Day address<\/a> and was painted for the 2016 Archibald Prize by Nick Stathopoulos; this portrait recently won the People\u2019s Choice Award.<\/p>\n<p>Watch the YouTube video that went viral:<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Deng Thiak Adut Unlimited\" width=\"1250\" height=\"703\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/buA3tsGnp2s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Deng\u2019s brutal yet inspiring story of a man who has overcome deadly adversity to become a lawyer and own his own law practice, the AC Law Group, is outlined beautifully in his book,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/songs-of-a-war-boy-deng-thiak-adut\/prod9780733636523.html\" target=\"_blank\"> <em>Songs of a War Boy.<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(Written with Ben McKelvey)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/songs-of-a-war-boy-deng-thiak-adut\/prod9780733636523.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-65014\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Order-this-book-to-win-1.jpg\" alt=\"order-this-book-to-win\" width=\"692\" height=\"28\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/booktoberfest\/promo100.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-64479\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/booktoberfest2016-rotatinghomepagebanner-770x200px-io.jpg\" alt=\"booktoberfest2016-rotatinghomepagebanner-770x200px-io\" width=\"693\" height=\"180\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>To celebrate<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/2016\/10\/05\/win-years-supply-books-booktoberfest\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Booktoberfest<\/a> at Booktopia, order<em> Songs of a War Boy <\/em>by October 31st and you\u2019ll go into the draw to<a href=\"http:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/booktoberfest-2016\/biographies-memoirs-and-true-stories\/promo695.html\" target=\"_blank\"> win a non-fiction prize pack worth $1000!<\/a> And if you order <em>any<\/em> book from the Booktoberfest showcase, you\u2019ll go into the draw to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/booktoberfest\/promo100.html\" target=\"_blank\">win a year\u2019s supply of books. <\/a>That\u2019s a $50 gift voucher every week \u2013 for an entire year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not many people have led the life Deng Adut has, and it\u2019s for this reason he\u2019s been announced as this year\u2019s NSW State Finalist in the Australian of the Year Awards. It was in September last year when Deng\u2019s life story began to go viral. Presented in a YouTube video promoting Western Sydney University, we learn that at age six he was taken from his mother in South Sudan, marched 33 days to Ethiopia, and conscripted into the Sudanese People\u2019s Liberation Army, whereby he was trained to use an AK-47 and sent into battle. It wasn\u2019t until he was 12 that Deng was rescued by his brother, John. Hidden in the back of a truck, he was smuggled out of Sudan, into Kenya, and was eventually brought to Australia as a refugee by the United Nations. Whilst working in a local service station, Deng taught himself to read and started studying at TAFE. In 2005 he enrolled in a Bachelor of Law degree at Western Sydney University and became the first person in his family to graduate from university. Deng gave this year\u2019s Australia Day address and was painted for the 2016 Archibald Prize by Nick Stathopoulos; this portrait recently&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":65367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[4,92,6703,73,77],"tags":[7079,748,7080,7078,7077,7081],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/SocialMediaImage_3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65338"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65581,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65338\/revisions\/65581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}