Viet Thanh Nguyen

Viet Thanh Nguyen Vietnamese Nguyễn Thanh Việt born March 13 1971 is a South Vietnameseborn American professor and novelist He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California Nguyens debut novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the Dayton Literary Peace Prize the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and many other accolades He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017 Nguyen is a regular contributor oped columnist for The New York Times covering immigration refugees politics culture and Southeast Asia He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2020 was elected as the first Asian American member of the Pulitzer Prize Board in its 103yearhistory In the teaching field in 2023 Nguyen is also the first Asian American to headline the Charles Eliot Norton Lecture Series at Harvard University