Viet Thanh Nguyen

Recent Posts

On Winning the Pulitzer Prize

Posted on April 18, 2016 | Leave a comment

I got the news at around 3:15 thanks to my Twitter and Facebook feed. I sat around shocked, stunned, fielding phone calls from my publicist and doing news interviews and trying to reply to as many emails, tweets, and Facebook comments and messages as I could. I called my wonderful partner, Lan Duong. I felt queasy and struck by literary lightning. ...(read more)
The New Yorker: Refugees in America

Posted on February 6, 2017 | Leave a comment

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Viet Thanh Nguyen tells stories about people poised between their devastated homeland and their affluent adopted country. The following review was written by Joyce Carol Oates for The New Yorker. Consider the distinctions between the words “expat,” “immigrant,” “refugee.” “Expat” suggests a cosmopolitan spirit and re ...(read more)
Late Night with Seth Meyers

Posted on February 11, 2017 | Leave a comment

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen sits down with Seth Meyers to talk about his refugee experience. In part 2 of this interview, he explains the difference between refugees and immigrants and the fears Americans have of them. Part 1: Part 2: Here’s the transcript of the interview: Seth Meyers: Obviously, this is a book ab ...(read more)
Viet Nguyen Awarded MacArthur Fellowship

Posted on October 11, 2017 | Leave a comment

The MacArthur Foundation has awarded Viet Thanh Nguyen with a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship for his work as a fiction writer and cultural critic. In particular, the MacArthur Foundation recognizes Viet Nguyen’s contributions to “challenging popular depictions of the Vietnam War and exploring the myriad ways that war lives on for those it ha ...(read more)
Paul Beatty In Conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen

Posted on June 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

In fall 2017, the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute hosted Beatty and Nguyen for an onstage conversation for Believer Magazine. A double agent and a sellout. A French Vietnamese man concealed to nearly everyone around him, and a black American who is a stranger in his own hometown. These are the narrators of The Sellout by P ...(read more)
The René Wellek Prize Citations 2017

Posted on June 21, 2018 | Leave a comment

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War co-wins the 2017 Rene Wellek Prize with Jeffrey Cohen’s Stone. The Rene Wellek Prize is annually awarded, respectively, to the best book overall in comparative literature. Article originally published by ACLA. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Nothing Ever Dies: Viet ...(read more)
“REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING”: AN INTERVIEW WITH VIET THANH NGUYEN

Posted on September 25, 2018 | Leave a comment

Karl Ashoka Britto interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen about his novels and personal experiences as a refugee for Public Books. Since the 2015 publication of his Pulitzer Prize–winning debut novel The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen has emerged as one of the literary world’s leading public intellectuals. At a time of rising xenophobia and anti-refug ...(read more)