Monique Truong, bitter in the mouth

MONIQUE TRUONG, born in Saigon, came to the U.S. as a refugee. She currently lives in New York City. Her first novel, The Book of Salt, was a New York Times Notable Book and a national bestseller. It won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award, and the 7th Annual Asian American Literary Award. Her second novel, Bitter in the Mouth, received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rosenthal Family Foundation Award and named a 25 Best Fiction Books by Barnes & Noble and a 10 Best Fiction Books by Hudson Booksellers. She is the recipient of the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship, Princeton University’s Hodder Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellowship.