American Writers’ Week: Viet Thanh Nguyen

About this event

Viet Thanh Nguyen is considered one of the leading voices in the urgent conversation around the immigrant experience. His breakout debut novel The Sympathizer was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and was turned into an HBO limited series. A prolific essayist and opinion writer, he has published in The New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian.In conversation with author and screenwriter Nikesh Shukla he talks about the themes of his most recent book, To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other, a deeply personal and provocative collection of essays that explores what it means to be an outsider from a variety of perspectives.Nguyen reflects on his lived experience as a child refugee from Vietnam as well as the literary, historical, and political dimensions of otherness. In bold meditation on the power – and burden – of giving voice to the voiceless, he interrogates the role of the writer in times of violence, the responsibilities of fiction, and the possibility of solidarity across borders and communities.Part of the British Library’s American Writers’ Week (28 September to 2 October 2026), presented in association with Festival America, Vincennes, France. Participating writers include Alison Bechdel, Daniel Kraus, Jeanine Cummins, Joyce Carol Oates, Katie Kitamura and Rabih Alameddine and Viet Thanh Nguyen.Buy tickets for two or more American Writers’ Week events and save 25% on your basket.In association with The Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania.