Viet Thanh Nguyen, Thi Bui and Meron Hadero

The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives

Edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen

from Abrams Image

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer), and contributors Thi Bui (The Best We Could Do) and Meron Hadero discuss their new anthology The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives. Edited by Nguyen, himself a refugee, The Displaced brings together a host of prominent refugee writers from around the world to explore and illuminate their experiences. The Displaced is an indictment of closing our doors and a powerful look at what it means to be forced to leave home and find a place of asylum. The publisher will donate 10 percent of the cover price of this book, a minimum of $25,000 annually, to The International Rescue Committee (IRC), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing humanitarian aid, relief, and resettlement to refugees and other victims of oppression or violent conflict.

Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam in 1971. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, he and his family fled to the United States. The author of three books including The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a recently published story collection, The Refugees, Nguyen is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles.

Meron Hadero was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and lived in Germany before arriving in the United States as a refugee. She has been published in Best American Short Stories, Selected Shorts on NPR/PRI, the Missouri Review, Boulevard, e O ng, Indiana Review, e Normal School, and Addis Ababa Noir. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review and O Assignment. She lives in Oakland and is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto.

Thi Bui was born in Vietnam and immigrated to the United States as a child. She studied art and law and thought about becoming a civil rights lawyer, but became a public school teacher instead. Bui lives in Berkeley, California, with her son, her husband, and her mother. A Different Pond by Bao Phi, illustrated by Thi Bui, was named a 2018 Caldecott Honor Book. The Best We Could Do is her debut graphic novel.