Aimee Phan

American author, of Vietnamese descent (born 1977)

Aimee Phan
Born	1977 (age 46–47) Orange County, California, U.S.
Education	University of California, Los Angeles (BA) Iowa Writers' Workshop (MFA)
Occupation(s)	Novelist, educator

Aimee Phan (born 1977)^[1] is an American novelist and educator, of Vietnamese descent. She teaches at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, California.

Early life and education

Aimee Phan was born in 1977 and raised in Orange County, California.^[1]^[2] Her mother was a social worker in the Little Saigon neighborhood.^[1]

She received a BA degree in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); and received a MFA degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she won a Maytag Fellowship.

Career

Her first novel, We Should Never Meet (2004), is about American foster children from Vietnam, during the Vietnam War.^[3]^[4] We Should Never Meet (2004) was named a notable book by the Kiriyama Prize in fiction, and was a finalist for the 2005 Asian American Literary Awards.^[1] Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, USA Today and The Oregonian among other publications.

Phan worked from fall 2005 to summer 2007 as an assistant professor in English at Washington State University. She teaches as an associate professor in writing and literature at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, California.^[5]^[6]

She resides in Berkeley, California with her husband and two kids.

Selected works

Books

We Should Never Meet: Stories (2004, St. Martin's Press)
The Reeducation of Cherry Truong: A Novel (2012, St. Martin's Press)

Essays

Why Mainstream Critics Fail Writers of Color in Salon
The Price of Urban Family Living in The New York Times' The Motherlode
Housed in Guernica
The Disciples of Memory in The Rumpus
Where They Came From in The New York Times

Awards and honors

2004, Association of Asian American Studies Book Award
2005, Finalist for the Asian American Literary Awards in Fiction
2005, Kiriyama Prize Notable Book^[1]
2010, National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship
2014, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency

Reviews

Carmela Ciuraru, September 29, 2004, We Should Never Meet by Aimee Phan, The Los Angeles Times
Anhoni Patel, September 19, 2004, We Should Never Meet by Aimee Phan, San Francisco Chronicle
Jee Yoon Lee, May 10, 2012 The Reeducation of Cherry Truong by Aimee Phan in Hyphen Magazine
Susan M. Lee, March 8, 2012 The Reeducation of Cherry Truong by Aimee Phan in In the Fray Magazine

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Janette, Michele (2011-07-22). My Viet: Vietnamese American Literature in English, 1962-Present. University of Hawaii Press. p. 217. ISBN 978-0-8248-6018-9.
^ Chang, Richard (2012-03-23). "O.C. native Aimee Phan writes novel about reeducation camps". Orange County Register. Retrieved 2024-03-26.
^ Patel, Anhoni (September 19, 2004). "Vietnam 'war babies' still nursing their scars". SFGate. Retrieved 2024-03-26.
^ Ciuraru, Carmela (2004-09-29). "Vietnam's legacy of childhood displacement". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2024-03-26.
^ "Next Letter in the Mail: Aimee Phan". The Rumpus. 2020-07-30. Retrieved 2024-03-26.
^ Krasny, Michael (2015-04-30). "40 Years After Fall of Saigon, Vietnamese-American Writers Discuss War, Emigration". KQED. Retrieved 2024-03-26.