Viet Thanh Nguyen

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Viet Thanh Nguyen
Nguyen in 2015
Nguyen in 2015
BornNguyễn Thanh Việt
(1971-03-13) March 13, 1971 (age 53)
Ban Mê Thuột, South Vietnam
Occupation
  • Author
  • novelist
  • short story writer
  • professor
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUC Berkeley (BA, PhD)
Genrenovel, literary fiction, historical fiction, crime fiction, non-fiction
Notable worksThe Sympathizer (2015)
The Refugees (2017)
Notable awardsPulitzer Prize for Fiction (2016), MacArthur Genius Grant (2017), Guggenheim Fellowship (2017)
SpouseLan Duong
Children2
Website
vietnguyen.info

Viet Thanh Nguyen (Vietnamese: Nguyễn Thanh Việt; born March 13, 1971) is a Vietnamese-American novelist and non-fiction writer. He teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.[1]

Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his first novel, The Sympathizer.[2] That book also won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize[3] and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.[4] He was given a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship[5] and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017.[6] Nguyen writes opinion essays about immigration, refugees, politics, culture and South East Asia for The New York Times.[7]

Nguyen was born in Ban Mê Thuột, Viet Nam (now spelled Buôn Mê Thuột). He came to the United States as a refugee in 1975 with his family. At first, they settled in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. That was one of four places in the U. S. for Vietnamese refugees to live. After that, they moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His family lived there until 1978 when they moved to San Jose, California.[1]

After high school in San Jose, Nguyen went to college at the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated with degrees in English and ethnic studies. He stayed at Berkeley for a Ph.D. in English. Then he moved to Los Angeles to teach at the University of Southern California.[1]

Books[change | change source]

  • Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America (2002)
  • The Sympathizer (2015)
  • Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and The Memory of War (2016)
  • The Refugees (2017)
  • Chicken of the Sea (2019)
  • The Committed (2021)

References[change | change source]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Bio". Viet Thanh Nguyen. 2013-06-28. Retrieved 2023-01-19.
  2. "The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press)". The Pulitzer Prizes. 2016. Retrieved January 19, 2023.
  3. "Award Winners – Dayton Literary Peace Prize". Retrieved 2023-01-19.
  4. "The First Novel Prize". The Center for Fiction. Retrieved 2023-01-19.
  5. Meet the 2017 MacArthur Fellows, retrieved 2023-01-19
  6. "John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation 2017 Fellows - United States and Canada" (PDF). John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 2017. Retrieved January 19, 2023.
  7. "Viet Thanh Nguyen". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-01-19.