VIET THANH NGUYEN

Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and literary scholar. Born in Buôn Mê Thuột, Vietnam, and raised in the U.S., his family was among the 130,000 refugees who fled to the U.S. after the Vietnam War in 1975. Nguyen went on to earn degrees in English and Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley, followed by a Ph.D. in English. His debut novel, The Sympathizer, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. He’s also the author of The Refugees, the nonfiction Nothing Ever Dies—a finalist for the National Book Award—and the children’s book Chicken of the Sea, co-written with his son Ellison and illustrated by Thi Bui and Hien Bui-Stafford. He is a University Professor and Aerol Arnold Chair at USC, as well as a recipient of Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships. Nguyen serves on the boards of the Pulitzer Prizes and the International Rescue Committee, while championing Vietnamese diaspora arts through DVAN and diaCRITICS.