Monday, February 13 2017, 4pm UGA Chapel Viet Thanh Nguyen's February 13 visit is supported by the Department of Comparative Literature and is part of the Global Georgia Initiative from the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. The prestigious lecture honors Dr. Betty Jean Craige, Professor Emerita and former director of the Willson Center. Viet Thanh Nguyen is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his 2015 novel The Sympathizer. His follow-up, 2016’s Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, was shortlisted for a National Book Award in nonfiction. A collection of short stories, The Refugees, will be published in February 2017. Born in Ban Me Thuot, Viet Nam in 1971, Nguyen and his family came to the United States as refugees in 1975. He earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Berkeley before accepting a teaching position at the University of Southern California, where he is now the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity. Other honors for The Sympathizer 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 the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. His first book, Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America, was published in 2002. Additionally, Vietnam/War/Memory/Justice: A Conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen will be held at 4 p.m. February 14 in the Larry Walker Room on the 4th floor of Dean Rusk Hall. Joining him will be Tiana S. Mykkeltvedt, a Georgia Law alumna and partner at the Atlanta law firm Bondurant Mixson & Elmore who was flown out of Vietnam as an orphan in April 1975, and Rusk Center Director Diane Marie Amann, Associate Dean for International Programs and Initiatives and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law at Georgia Law, who also serves as the International Criminal Court Prosecutor’s Special Advisor on Children in & Affected by Armed Conflict.
