9:40-11:10 am: Author reading and Q&A on the novel After Disasters - S2-3 Winnet Building

11:20-12:30 pm: Book signing and discussion of Dinh’s short story “Substitutes” - S2-08 Winnet Building

Viet Dinh was born in Viet Nam and raised in Colorado.  He teaches at University of Delaware and has won a prestigious O. Henry prize and an NEA Fellowship for his fiction writing. His first novel, After Disasters, was a Finalist for the 2017 PEN/Faulkner Award.

About After Disasters: Lyrically and grippingly written from multiple points of view, the 2016 novel is set in India after January 26, 2001 earthquake which virtually destroyed the city of Bhuj, killing over 12,000. Three main characters make overwhelming events personal. The novel begins with Ted, an American member of the Disaster Assistance Response Team after receiving training through USAID, and focuses on relationships with an Indian doctor and a British rescuer trained as a fire-fighter.  The novel evokes personalized view of a global community where the members interact over years in their work as first responders to natural and unnatural disasters caused by flood, earthquake and the folly of war. 

Set in Vietnam during the fall of Saigon, “Substitutes” centers on a class of sixth-graders too poor to escape the communism sweeping their country. The schoolboys watch a cycle of teachers come and go within less than a year. Dinh’s use of first-person plural narration shows the student’s differing reactions to each instructor—“disciplined with Mr. Hanh, sweet with Miss Bui, compliant with Mrs. Pham, and rebellious with Mr. Luu. Every one of them disappears, and according to the boys they have most likely sailed down the Mekong River in search of a safer place rather than staying in a country divided.... Then comes their last instructor, a North Vietnamese soldier, General Khang, who does not dispel their dreams of escape, but encourages it in his propaganda-like speech” (Linda Tran, writing for Five Points). “Substitutes” is a surprisingly funny story with a though-provoking twist at the end. Dinh will discuss the work's creation: how he combined his family's past with historical research to create a moving portrait of Vietnam through the eyes of children.