LAS VEGAS-October 28, 2009-Vu Tran, a UNLV graduate and English instructor received the prestigious 2009 Whiting Writers' Award for his collection of short stories on Oct. 28 in New York City. The award, given by the Giles Whiting Foundation, is a coveted prize for up-and-coming writers of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and playwriting. The foundation has recognized young writers since 1985. Tran, 34, is one of 10 writers who received the award and $50,000.
Tran is described as a writer whose stories explore Vietnamese culture, immigrant life and the inherent feeling of longing in romantic, mysterious and fantastical literary prose.
"There's a mood of wonderful quietude internally and externally. He is a beautiful writer of English," said Barbara Bristol, Director of the Writers Program at the Whiting Foundation. "He's more like a poet than a fiction writer because his work is more fair and dense. He is an old soul."
"His writing is very poetic and in a sense very romantic because he writes often about longing and desire that in some way can't overcome obstacles but somehow wants to," said UNLV English Professor Douglas Unger, who was Tran's dissertation advisor. "There's a very charming, poignant and romantic element to his writing."
Tran, his mother and sister left Vietnam in 1980 to reunite with Tran's father in Oklahoma. Tran grew up listening to his mother's description of life in Vietnam, where tradition, religion and family were intertwined. Where his memories weren't so clear, his mother's filled in and so a place Tran and his family escaped from later became the backdrop and inspiration for many of Tran's literary pieces.
"It's such a different world than I grew up in. What I would always do is take that world and I would come up with my own plotline, but the events were very much inspired by mother's stories," said Tran. "It was a wonderful alternate world. A lot of the stories in my collection are bringing that alternate world to life."
Tran listened intently to his mother's narratives; so much so that he knew from an early age he wanted to be a writer and nothing else.
"I feel like getting this award is very much a confirmation of all those years I wanted to do this," Tran said. "It makes me feel like I am on the right track. All the struggles and uncertainty and hard work were worth it."
Tran received bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Tulsa. He received a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Tran was a Glenn Schaeffer Fellow at UNLV where he graduated with a Ph.D. in English in 2006. He teaches creative writing, world literature and composition at UNLV.
Past Whiting Writers' Award recipients include: Denis Johnson, Mona Simpson, Tony Kushner, Jorie Graham, Gretel Ehrlich, Michael Cunningham, Alice McDermott, William T. Vollman, Ian Frazier and David Foster Wallace. For more information, please visit: www.whitingfoundation.org.
