Viet Thanh Nguyen has just become the first Asian-American member of the Pulitzer Board.
A big congratulations to Viet Thanh Nguyen, who is joining the Pulitzer Prize Board as its first Asian-American and Vietnamese-American member.
After an extensive nominating process, the board chooses the winners from a list of finalists in each category and may additionally give a Special Award or Citation to other works. Nguyen, a professor at the University of Southern California, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Sympathizer.
The Pulitzer co-chairs—Stephen Engelberg of ProPublica and Aminda Marqués Gonzalez of the Miami Herald—said in a statement they were “delighted” at his addition to the board. “His remarkable range of experiences as a novelist, journalist, essayist and scholar make him a wonderful addition to the board in this time of extraordinary ferment,” they said.
