Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen to give Hanway Lecture

Viet Thanh Nguyen, Ph.D., award-winning author, will deliver Loyola University Maryland's Hanway Lecture in Global Studies on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020, at 6 p.m., via Zoom.

Nguyen will discuss migration during the lecture titled, “An Evening with Viet Thanh Nguyen,” and focus on his New York Times best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Sympathizer.

“Immigration—from migration to resettlement to acculturation and assimilation—is a critical issue facing both the United States and Baltimore,” said Mary Kate Schneider, Ph.D., director of Global Studies and lecturer of political science. “Through personal experience as a child refugee whose family left Vietnam in 1975, Viet Thanh Nguyen speaks to this issue through fiction, creating characters that allow the reader to experience what it is like to search for a sense of belonging in places that are far removed from home.”

Nguyen’s debut novel, The Sympathizer, is a suspenseful, espionage story of love and betrayal. The book has also received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, among others. Nguyen has published additional award-winning pieces including a collection of short stories called The Refugees and Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, a reflection on how the Vietnam War is remembered by different countries. His latest work, Chicken of the Sea, is a children’s book—which his 6-year-old son, Ellison, collaborated with him on.

Nguyen is a professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and comparative literature, and the Aerol Arnold Chair of English at the University of Southern California. He is also a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. Nguyen, a Vietnam native, moved to the United States with his family in 1975. Nguyen graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with degrees in English and ethnic studies, as well as a Ph.D. in English.

For more information and to registration, go to www.loyola.edu/hanwaylecture.