Born: 1971, Ban Mê Thuột, South VietnamLives: Pasadena, California
Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Ban Mê Thuột, South Vietnam. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he took a BA in English and Ethnic Studies in 1992 and a PhD in English in 1997.
He joined the University of Southern California in 1997 and holds its Aerol Arnold Chair of English. Besides fiction he writes nonfiction and is a New York Times op-ed columnist; in 2020 he became the first Asian American member of the Pulitzer Prize Board. He lives in Pasadena, California.