Penguin Speakers Bureau

Bich Minh Nguyen (pronounced Bit Min New-`win) was born in Saigon in 1974. Her family fled Vietnam on April 29, 1975, and eventually settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Nguyen grew up. These experiences formed the basis of her memoir, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, which received the PEN/Jerard Award and was named a best book of 2007 by The Chicago Tribune. Nguyen has appeared on programs such as The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to discuss the prevalent themes in her book—immigration, food, and family—and how they relate to so many other areas of life. Her work has also appeared in publications such as Gourmet magazine, Jane magazine, the anthology Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing up in America, and the anthology Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose. She also coedited three anthologies: 30/30: Thirty American Stories from the Last Thirty Years (Penguin Academic), Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: I & Eye (Longman), and The Contemporary American Short Story (Longman).

Nguyen teaches literature and creative writing at Purdue University. She lives with her husband, the novelist Porter Shreve, in West Lafayette, Indiana, and Chicago. Her novel, Short Girls, was published by Penguin in 2010.

Learn more about this speaker

"Memoirs, NWAW's March Must-Reads"
Northwest Asian Weekly

"Author Nguyen struggles to balance her Vietnamese past and Michigan present"
Detroit Free Press

Review of Short Girls
Los Angeles Times

"An Asian child finds America in 'Dinner'"
USA Today

"Food brings a taste of acceptance"
San Francisco Chronicle

"Hungry Heart"
The New York Times

"Stealing Buddha's Dinner selected for Great Michigan Read"
The Holland Sentinel

“Shared reading experience not limited to paper”
The Exponent

Welcome to the Great Michigan Read from author Bich Minh Nguyen
Michigan Humanities Council

“Vietnamese Memoir chosen for Great Michigan Read”
NPR

“Q&A with Common Read author”
The Exponent