AAJA Visibility Award: Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among many other awards, and was turned into an HBO limited series. His other books include The Committed, the sequel to The Sympathizer, and 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). He is also the author of the bestselling short story collection The Refugees, and two children’s books, Chicken of the Sea (written with his son Ellison) and Simone. Besides editing The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, he teaches at the University of Southern California, where he is a University Professor. His next book is To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other, forthcoming from Harvard University Press in 2025.
ABOUT THE RECIPIENT: Award-winning scholar and author Viet Thanh Nguyen has written extensively about the Vietnamese diaspora and dissected the roots and impacts of colonialism and war. He has spoken out against the long history of violence and discrimination against Asian Americans and participated in interviews, exhibits, and public events to promote dialogue and understanding. A regular contributor to the New York Times, he was elected as the first Asian American member of the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2020, highlighting his impact on the literary world and his contributions to the AAPI community. AAJA’s governing board is honored to present him with the Visibility Award, which appreciates efforts to increase the visibility and meaningful representation of the AAPI community in popular culture and mass media.