Speaking for an Other | Viet Thanh Nguyen | CCSRE's 18th Annual Anne & Loren Kieve Distinguished Lecture
Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity
Centering Race Consortium
Dean of Humanities and Sciences
Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA)
Asian American Activities Center
Program in African and African American Studies
Program in Asian American Studies
Department of English
Creative Writing Program
Dean of Religious & Spiritual Life
Photo Credit: Olivier H Gamas
The Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) is thrilled to welcome Viet Thanh Nguyen as our 18th Annual Anne and Loren Kieve Distinguished Lecturer. Dr. Nguyen is a renowned novelist and public intellectual, best known for his novel The Sympathizer, for which he won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. His talk is titled "Speaking for an Other".
Dr. Nguyenʼs honors include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, and a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards. His other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America.
Dr. Nguyen is a University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He is also the author of the bestselling short story collection, The Refugees. Most recently he has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and le Prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book in France), for The Sympathizer.
Dr. Nguyen is also the editor of The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives and the Library of America volume for Maxine Hong Kingston. He co-authored Chicken of the Sea, a childrenʼs book, with his then six-year-old son, Ellison, and his most recent book is The Committed, the sequel to The Sympathizer. HBO is turning The Sympathizer into a TV series for 2023, directed by Park Chan-wook.