Dear Members of the Campus Community,

On Tuesday, November 16, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen will deliver the University of Puget Sound’s Fall 2021 Susan Resneck Pierce Lecture in Public Affairs and the Arts on the topic of “Refugees, Language, and the Meaning of ‘America.’”

His visit to campus also includes his postponed Dolliver faculty seminar with Professors Monica DeHart and Priti Joshi, whose NEH-sponsored Dolliver Professorship took up the question of "What's in a Fact?"  

Dr. Nguyen is an Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. Recently named a fellow of the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, he also has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Dr. Nguyen has received residencies, fellowships, and grants from the Luce Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, the James Irvine Foundation, the Huntington Library, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Creative Capital, and the Warhol Foundation. 

His novel The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2016. Other 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, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. Dr. Nguyen also is the author of Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America, the bestselling short story collection, The Refugees, and his 2020 novel and sequel to The Sympathizer, The Committed.

Susan Resneck Pierce Lecture
with Viet Thanh Nguyen
“Refugees, Language, and the Meaning of ‘America’”

Tuesday, November 16, 2021 at 7:30 p.m.
Schneebeck Concert Hall – in person and via Schneebeck Live
Tickets Required

The Pierce Lectures are free to current students, staff and faculty, but tickets are required.  Tickets may be obtained at the Information Desk in Wheelock Student Center or online. I look forward to seeing you at the lecture.

Sincerely,

Isiaah
Isiaah Crawford, Ph.D. | President