INPRINT, HOUSTON'S PREMIER literary arts nonprofit organization, hosts a virtual event with MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen. Tonight's livestream, available through Inprint's website, is the latest edition of the renowned literary organization's 40th-anniversary Margarett Root Brown Reading Series, which has seen prominent writers like Margaret Atwood, Nick Hornby and Kazuo Ishiguro present live virtual readings of their works to Houston literary fans over the past year through Inprint's new "virtual studio."
Nguyen, whose family came to the U.S. in 1975 as refugees during the Vietnam war, will read an excerpt from his new novel The Committed, a sequel to his lauded debut novel The Sympathizer, before engaging in a conversation with Houston author and Inprint Advisory Board member Sarah Choi.
While Nguyen's debut novel, which won him a Pulitzer, depicts the Vietnam War from the perspective of the Vietnamese, his new novel is set in 1980s Paris. Nguyen, who teaches at the University of Southern California in addition to working as a cultural critic-at-large for the Los Angeles Times, is also the author of the story collection The Refugees, the children's book Chicken of the Sea, and two nonfiction works.
"Fierce in tone, capacious, witty, sharp, and deeply researched, The Committed marks not just a sequel to its groundbreaking predecessor, but a sum total accumulation of a life devoted to Vietnamese American history and scholarship," wrote Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong of Nguyen's new novel.
General admission tickets to the virtual event are $5 and can be purchased through Inprint's website.