Viet Thanh Nguyen will give a special lecture, open to the campus community, on Wednesday,  October 15, 2025, in the Orchard Conference Room at 2:30pm. Perhaps best-known for his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Sympathizer, he is also the author of A Man of Two Faces; The Committed; The Refugees; Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction); and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He has also published Chicken of the Sea, a children’s book written in collaboration with his son, Ellison. He is currently the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California.

A reception from 1:30pm-2:30pm precedes the special lecture.  Dr. Nguyen’s talk is part of a series of events that commemorates the 35th anniversary of the Asian American Studies department. This event is sponsored by the Asian American Studies Department, English Department, Distinguished Visiting Special Program fund, CSU Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Student Achievement Program funds, and Student Affairs.  For more information, please email Monica Conejo at monica.conejo@csun.edu or call 818-677-4966.