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Manuscript workshop for SEEK, MEMORY by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Image of Viet Thanh NguyenThe Center for Transpacific Studies is hosting a manuscript workshop for Viet Thanh Nguyen’s nonfiction book SEEK, MEMORY, a blend of memoir and criticism that addresses war, refugees, Hollywood movies, growing up Asian in the United States, mental illness, becoming a writer, and the fine line between history and memory.

 

The respondents are the poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong (MINOR FEELINGS), novelist and essayist Laila Lalami (THE OTHER AMERICANS), and novelist Gina Apostol (INSURRECTO).

 

The workshop will be held online on Friday, October 29, 12-2PM Pacific time. Please RSVP to Tommy Nguyen <tommyn@usc.edu>. The 55,000 word manuscript of SEEK, MEMORY is available only to attendees of the workshop.

 

 

Biographies of the respondents

Gina Apostol

Gina Apostol’s fourth novel, Insurrecto, was named by Publishers’ Weekly one of the Ten Best Books of 2018 and selected as an Editor’s Choice of the NYT. The New York Times calls Insurrecto “a bravura performance…Apostol is a magician with language (think Borges, think Nabokov)….” Her third book, Gun Dealers’ Daughter, won the 2013 PEN/Open Book Award. Her first two novels, Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, both won the Juan Laya Prize for the Novel (Philippine National Book Award). She was a fellow at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy, and Emily Harvey Foundation, among others. Her essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, and others. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts and grew up in Tacloban, Leyte, in the Philippines. She teaches at the Fieldston School in New York City.

Cathy Park Hong

Cathy Park Hong’s New York Times bestselling book of creative nonfiction, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, was published in Spring 2020 by One World/Random House and Profile Books (UK). Minor Feelings was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and earned her recognition on TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2021 list. She is also the author of poetry collections Engine Empire, published in 2012 by W.W. Norton, Dance Dance Revolution, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Translating Mo’um. Hong is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her prose and poetry have been published in the New York Times, New Republic, the Guardian, Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the poetry editor of the New Republic and is a full professor at Rutgers-Newark University.

Laila Lalami

Laila Lalami was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States. She is the author of five books, including The Moor’s Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was on the longlist for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, Harper’s, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, and the Guggenheim Foundation and is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside. She lives in Los Angeles.