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)
Charlie Rose Interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen

Posted on December 14, 2016 | Leave a comment

Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his debut novel, “The Sympathizer,” with Charlie Rose. TRANSCRIPT Charlie Rose: Viet Thanh Nguyen is here. His debut novel, “The Sympathizer,” won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It examines the Vietnam War through the eyes of its narrator, a mole for the Viet Cong embedded with the south Vietna ...(read more)
Nothing Ever Dies is a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

Posted on January 21, 2017 | Leave a comment

Viet’s book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction. The book was also a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. The following article by Caroline Kellogg was originally published in the Los Angeles Times. The National Book Critics Circle selected a ...(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 resourc ...(read more)
In Praise of Doubt and Uselessness

Posted on April 24, 2017 | Leave a comment

The following article by Viet Thanh Nguyen was originally published by the Los Angeles Times. Almost exactly 20 years ago, I arrived in Los Angeles in the month of June. I had received my doctorate from UC Berkeley in May and had turned 26 in February. That summer, I found a small apartment in Silver Lake and began preparing for a new career as a ...(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)