Viet Thanh Nguyen, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, grew up in the central highlands of Vietnam before coming to the United States as a refugee in 1975. He and his family initially settled in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa., one of four refugee camps established in the U.S. for those leaving his home country following the end of the Vietnam War. He then lived in Harrisburg, Pa., until 1978.

Seeking better financial opportunities, his parents moved to San Jose, Calif., where they opened one of the first Vietnamese grocery stores in the city. Viet first attended the University of California, Riverside, then UCLA, before settling in at UC-Berkeley, where he graduated with degrees in English and ethnic studies. He moved on to a teaching career at the University of Southern California, where he is University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature.

Professor Nguyen is also a prolific author and has won numerous awards for his writing, including the 2016 Pulitzer for his novel, "The Sympathizer." It also earned the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Literary Excellence, among many other honors. The book was cited on more than 30 "best of the year" lists and its foreign rights have been sold in 28 countries.

Professor Nguyen has served as a MacArthur Fellow since 2018 and also was named a Guggenheim Fellow for 2017-18. His most recent publication is "The Committed," a sequel to "The Sympathizer." He also has written a collection of short stories titled "The Refugees," as well as "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War," which was a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction. His other works include "Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America," and "Chicken of the Sea," a children's book written in collaboration with his 6-year-old son, Ellison.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, for your commitment to excellence, even in the face of considerable obstacles; for your eloquent writing about refugees, especially those displaced by the Vietnam War; and for your dedication to teaching the next generation of authors and scholars to improve the human condition, Franklin & Marshall College bestows upon you the Honorary Degree, Doctor of Letters.