Viet Thanh Nguyen, the recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, has been appointed as the first Vietnamese American and Asian American member of the Pulitzer Board. In a tweet on September 9, Viet expressed his honor to join the board and acknowledged the impact that the prize has on a writer’s career and readers’ perceptions. His novel, ‘The Sympathizer,’ garnered the Pulitzer Prize and various other accolades. Additionally, Viet is known for his short story collection, ‘The Refugees,’ which received favorable reviews and was published in Vietnamese. He is a professor at the University of Southern California and also contributes opinion pieces to The New York Times. The co-chairs of the Pulitzer Board, Stephen Engelberg and Aminda Marqués Gonzalez, warmly welcomed Viet Thanh Nguyen, recognizing his diverse experiences as a novelist, journalist, essayist, and scholar. Viet’s latest publication, ‘Chicken of the Sea,’ is a children’s book co-authored with his son, Ellison. His forthcoming book, ‘The Committed,’ serves as a sequel to ‘The Sympathizer’ and is slated for release in March 2021. The Pulitzer Prizes, established by Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-American journalist and newspaper publisher, are governed by a 19-member board comprising leading journalists, news executives, academics, and individuals in the arts. The prizes were first awarded in 1917 after Joseph Pulitzer bequeathed funds to Columbia University to found the School of Journalism and establish the Pulitzer Prizes.
