2024

Q&A: Denison College, Feb 12, online.

Panel: “A Good Book Is Never Late,” AWP Conference, Feb 10, Kansas City, MO.

2023

Panel: "Exchanges with 9 Writers from the Diaspora," DVAN, Jean-Pierre Melville Library, Sep 15, Paris, France.

Lecture: “Ways of Seeing: Narrative Point of View,” StoryStudio Summer Novel Series, August 24, Chicago, IL.

Lecture: “Is It What It Is?: The Bad & the Good in Cliché,” StoryStudio & Chicago Public Library, June 26, Chicago, IL.

Lecture & Panel: “The Writer’s Life: Barrington Cultural Series at the White House, June 17, Barrington, IL.

Q&A: “50 Years Later: Vietnam War Through the Eyes of Veterans, Vietnamese, and Refugees," Coastline College, June 19, online.    

Panel: Diversity and Inclusion for AAPI Heritage Month, The Addison Group, May 23, online.

Lecture: “A Taxonomy of Desire,” Crown Point High School, March 23, Crown Point, IL.

Lecture: “From Premise to Promise,” Barrington Writers’ Workshop, March 18, Barrington, IL.

Panel: “A Path Through the Swamp: Revision Strategies & Processes.” AWP, March 8-13, Seattle, WA.

Workshop Faculty: Master Workshop, StoryStudio Chicago & The Ragdale Foundation, February 20-26, Lake Forest, IL.

2022

Lecture: “What the Screen Can Teach Us on the Page,” Off-Campus Writers’ Workshop, Oct 13, Chicago, IL.

Faculty: Oklahoma Fall Arts Institute, Quartz Mountain, October 5-9, Quartz Mountain, OK.

Lecture: “Writing Our Impossible Characters,” StoryStudio Summer Novel Series, July 28, Chicago, IL.

Faculty: Kundiman, June 21-26, New York, NY.

Lecture: Off-Campus Writers’ Workshop, May 26, online.

Lecture: “Re-imagining Death: Conversations about Dying, Loss, and Grief," a National Endowment for the Humanities Program, the University of Montana's Humanities Institute & the Missoula Public Library, May 9, online.

Reading: College of Lewis & Clark, April 1, Portland, OR.

Q&A: University of Montana, March 8, online.

2021

Lecture: “What is Character?,” Kundiman, July 10, online.

Lecture: Off-Campus Writers’ Workshop, April 26, online.

Q&A: Denison University, March 26, online.

Lecture: Capilano University, March 5, online.

Lecture: New Trier High School Literary Festival, November 8, Winnetka, IL.

Panel: “Meeting of the Minds: The Impact of Effective Storytelling with Guy Rolnick,” Stevanovich Institute, University of Chicago, November 16, Chicago, IL

2020

Workshop Faculty:  Idyllwild Arts Writers Week, July 5-11, Idyllwild, CA, online.

Lecture & Panels:  Jadavpur University, January 22, Kolkata, India.

Panels: “Belong Everywhere, Belonging Nowhere” & “Dylan to Beatles: Bards For A Generation,” Kolkata Literary Meet, January 22-26, Kolkata, India.

2019

Lecture: New Trier High School Literary Festival, November 8, Winnetka, IL.

Lecture: Off-Campus Writers’ Workshop, October 24, Winnetka, IL.

Lecture & Panel: StoryStudio Writers’ Festival, October 5-6, Chicago, IL.

Workshop Faculty; Idyllwild Arts Writers Week, July 1-5, Idyllwild, CA.

Reading: HB Sunday Reading Series: Poetry, Prose, & Cocktails, April 21, Chicago, IL.

Reading: Writing Conference, Southern Illinois University, April 6, Edwardsville, IL.

Panels: “You've Got This: Finding and Sustaining Self-Reliance While Writing A Novel” & “You Want It Darker: The Care and Feeding of Darker Narratives,” AWP, Portland, OR, March 27-30.

Panel: “Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network”, Asian American Writers’ Workshop, March 23, New York.

Reading: Writers & Critics Event, Drake University, February 28, Des Moines, IA.

Lecture & Panel: Calcutta University, January 23, Kolkata, India.

Panels: “Flight and Fiction” & “Crazy Asian Stereotypes,” Kolkata Literary Meet, January 23-27, Kolkata, India.

2018

Lecture: New Trier High School Literary Festival, November 16, Winnetka, IL.

Keynote Address: Young Writers’ Conference, University of Tennessee-Martin, November 1-3, Martin, TN.

Lecture: Off-Campus Writers’ Workshop, October 25, Winnetka, IL.

Panel: “What My Teacher Taught Me: Douglas Unger, George Saunders, Maile Chapman, & Others,” Black Mountain Institute, Vegas Valley Book Festival, October 20, Las Vegas, NV.

Guest Author: Carl Sandberg Literary Awards, Harold Washington Library, October 9, Chicago, IL.

Writer-in-Residence: Stadler Center Writers Series, Bucknell University, October 2-6, Harrisburg, PA.

Lecture: Story Studio Chicago, Chicago, IL. September 28

Lecture: Northwestern Summer Writers’ Conference, August 10, Chicago, IL.

Reading & Lecture: Red Earth MFA, July 11-13. Oklahoma City, OK.

Reading & Lecture: Loft Mentor Series, Loft Literary Center, June 7-9, Minneapolis, MN.

Panel: “In Conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen and Kao Kalia Yang,” American Writers Museum, May 9, Chicago, IL.

Reading & Lecture: “Diablo Valley College Literature Week,” April 25-26, Pleasant Hill, CA.

Panel: “A Life of Crime,” AWP, March 7-11, Tampa, FL.

Reading & Lecture: “What Movies Teach Us as Writers,” Lions in Winter Literary Festival, Eastern Illinois University, January 27, Charleston, IL.

Reading & Lecture: “Why We Tell Stories,” Grand Valley Writer Series, November 14, Grand Valley, MI.

2017

Lecture: Northwestern Summer Writers’ Conference, August 13, Chicago, IL.

Panel: “Vietnamese Diasporic Literature Today,” with Linh Dinh, Andrew Lam, Cathy Linh Che, and Isabelle Pelaud, Asian American Literature Festival, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, July 17, Washington D.C.

Guest Author: “Novel Affair,” Ragdale Foundation, April 28-29, Lake Forest, IL.

Workshop Faculty: Iowa Writers’ House, April 21-23, Iowa City, IA.

Panel: “Crime Wave: The Mysterious Worlds of Abbott, Dahl, Lin, & Tran.” Virginia Festival of the Book, March 25, Charlottesville, VA.

Panel: “Vietnam’s Never-ending War: Exhibition as Pride, Prejudice, & Stereotype,” School of the Art Institute, March 3, Chicago, IL.

Reading: “InKY Reading Series,” Louisville Literary Arts, January 13, Louisville, KY.

2016

Lecture: “The Writer in the World: Celebrating 10 Years of the Black Mountain Institute w/ Wole Soyinka, Cheryl Strayed, Tom Bissell, Charles Bock, Oliva Clare, & Vu Tran, The Black Mountain Institute, November 21, Las Vegas, NV.

Reading: “Chippewa Valley Literary Festival,” October 19, Eau Claire, WI.

Reading: Columbia College, October 4, Chicago, IL.

Reading: Sunday Salon, September 25, Chicago, IL.

Reading: Creative Writing Festival, University of Tulsa, September 23, Tulsa, OK.

Panels: Festival America, September 7-11, Paris, France. “Writing Between Two Cultures” with Abha Dawesar and Ken Lui; “A Love Triangle” with Stewart O’Nan and Molly Prentiss; “America, a Dream or Exile?” with Sergio De La Pava and Abha Dawesar; “The City Is a Novel” with Ben Lerner and Atticus Lish; “The Weight of the Past” with Hector Tobar and Patrick Flanery; “Married Life” with Andria Williams and Virginia Reeves.

Reading: Chicago Lit Crawl, August 18, Chicago, IL.

Reading: City Lit, August 11, Chicago, IL.

Reading: Sewanee Writers’ Conference, July 19-31, Sewanee, TN.

Reading: Prairie Lights, Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, July 11, Iowa City, IA.

Panel: “Ghosts of the Past: in Conversation with Jean Thompson and Julia Keller,” Printers’ Row, June 11, Chicago, IL.

Panel: “International Writers: Vu Tran & Viet Thanh Nguyen,” Brooklyn Public Library, April 21, Brooklyn, NY.

Reading & Panels: “Las Vegas Writes: UNLV Black Mountain Institute Alumni Reading” & “Beyond 40 Years: A Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network Reading of Vietnamese American Fiction Writers,” AWP, March 30-April 3, Los Angeles, CA.

Reading: American Indian Model Schools, March 18, Oakland, CA.

Reading: Wit Rabbit Reading Series, February 20, Chicago, IL.

Reading: “Salon Reading with Vu Tran,” City of Asylum, February 12, Pittsburgh, PA.

2015

Reading & Lecture: Antioch University, December 14, Los Angeles, CA.

Reading: Booksmart Tulsa, December 10, Tulsa, OK.

Reading: Asian American Writers’ Workshop, December 7, New York, NY.

Panel: “The Refugee Experience,” Tell It Slant Reading Series, December 3, Portland, OR.

Reading: Late Night Library, December 3, Portland, OR.

Reading: Square Books, Thacker Mountain Radio Show, November 12, Oxford, MS.

Reading: S. Tennessee Community College, November 5, Memphis, TN.

Reading: DePaul University, October 29, Chicago, IL.

Reading: Divinity School, University of Chicago, October 28, Chicago, IL.

Workshop Faculty: “Oklahoma Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain,” October 21-25, Oklahoma City, OK.

Panel: “Thrills, Chills, and the Genre Defiance,” with Gwendolyn Womack, Texas Book Festival, October 18, Austin, TX.

Reading: Seminary Co-Op Bookstore, October 15, Chicago, IL.

Reading: Lies at Moustache Bar, October 8, Chicago, IL.

Reading & Panel: “Self-Portrait,” Iowa City Book Festival, October 3, Iowa City, IA.

Reading: Powell’s Bookstore, September 27, Portland, OR.

Panel: “Master Manipulators,” with Laura Lippman and Andre Dubus III, Brooklyn Book Festival, September 20, Brooklyn, NY.

Panel: “Suspenseful Reads,” Kerrytown Book Festival, September 13, Ann Arbor, MI.

Reading: California College of the Arts, September 11, San Francisco, CA.

Reading: CityLights Bookstore, September 10, San Francisco, CA.

Reading: University Books, September 9, Berkeley, CA.

Reading: The Writer’s Block, September 4, Las Vegas, NV.

Reading: BMI Alumni Readings, Black Mountain Institute, September 3, Las Vegas, NV.

Reading: Skylight Books, September 2, Los Angeles, CA.

Reading: Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, August 11-22, Middelbury, VT.

Reading: Bookends & Beginnings, August 6, Evanston, IL.

Reading: Book Launch, Open Books, August 3, Chicago, IL.

Panel: Book Expo America, May 28, New York, NY.