Mom Luang Boonlua Debyasuvarn[a]néeKunchon (December 13, 1911 – June 7, 1982), writing under the pen nameBoonlua, was a Thai writer, educator and civil servant.[1][2] She is considered to have been one of Thailand's most important educators during a crucial phase of that country's modernization.[3]
Biography
The youngest child of Chao Phraya Thewet, a high ranking official who had 32 children, and the only child of Mom Nual, a classical Thai dancer, she was born in Bangkok and was educated at a Catholic convent primary school there, at a convent secondary school in Penang and then earned her secondary school certificate at Saint Mary’s S.P.G School in Bangkok. She received a BA in Thai language and literature at Chulalongkorn University in 1936 and an MA in education from the University of Minnesota in 1950.[4][1][5]
After her graduation from Chulalongkorn University, she entered public service. She later became a teacher of literature and then an educational administrator in the Ministry of Education. After completing her master's degree which had been funded by a scholarship, she returned to Thailand. She retired from public service in 1970; around the same time, she married a doctor. Boonlua also began writing, producing five novels.[6][1] She published a number of essays on Thai literature and is thought to have established the basis for modern Thai literary criticism.[7] Some of Boonlua's work has been translated into English and incorporated into a number of comparative studies of contemporary Southeast Asian writing. She also translated English stories into Thai and Thai literature into English.[8]
In 1968, she was tasked with founding the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Sanam Chandra Palace Campus of Silpakorn University.[7]
