Monique Truong Biography

Monique Truong is the Vietnamese American author of the bestselling, award-winning novels, The Book of Salt, Bitter in the Mouth, and The Sweetest Fruits. She's also a former refugee, essayist, avid eater, lyricist/librettist, and intellectual property attorney (more or less in this order).

Truong graduated from Yale University and the Columbia University School of Law, going on to specialize in intellectual property.

The author coedited the anthology Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, and her essay Welcome to America was featured on National Public Radio. Granting her an award of excellence, the Vietnamese American Studies Center at San Francisco State University called her "a pioneer in the field, as an academic, an advocate, and an artist." She was awarded a prestigious Lannan Foundation writing residency in 2001.

Her other works are Bitter in the Mouth (2010) and The Book of Salt (2003). Bitter in the Mouth received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was named a 25 Best Fiction Books of 2010 by Barnes & Noble, a 10 Best Fiction Books of 2010 by Hudson Booksellers, and the adult fiction Honor Book by the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association.

The Book of Salt was a national bestseller and the recipient of the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award, a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles National Literary Award, an Association for Asian American Studies Poetry/Prose Award, and a Seventh Annual Asian American Literary Award. In 2003,The Book of Salt was honored as a New York Times Notable Fiction Book, a Chicago Tribune Favorite Fiction Book, one of the Village Voice's 25 Favorite Books, and one of the Miami Herald's Top 10 Books, among other citations.

Monique Truong's website

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