Join Loyalty in welcoming Viet Thanh Nguyen and Minnie Phan for a VIRTUAL event to celebrate the release of Simone!  This event will be held digitally via Crowdcast and is free to attend. Click here to register for the event. You can also order the book from our website to be added to the event's registration list, and there will also be an option to snag the book during the event.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and illustrator Minnie Phan comes an unforgettable story of a Vietnamese American girl whose life is transformed by a wildfire.

When Simone is awakened by her mom as a wildfire threatens their home, it is the beginning of a life-changing journey. On their way to take shelter in a high school gym, the family passes firefighters from a prison unit battling the fire. Simone’s mom tells her that when she was a girl in Viet Nam, she was forced to evacuate her home after a flood. Joined by other children sheltering in the gym, Simone, a budding artist, encourages everyone to draw as a way to process their situation. After a few days, Simone and her mom are able to return to their home, which is fortunately still standing, and her outlook has changed. As Simone begins creating a piece of art with one of her new friends, she realizes that even though they are young, they can dream and work together for a more sustainable future. With a poetic, haunting family story by esteemed author Viet Thanh Nguyen and gorgeous art from illustrator Minnie Phan, this powerful tale introduces an unforgettable young heroine who awakens to a new role fighting for her community and for the future of the planet.

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction TV and now an HBO TV series, directed by Park Chan-wook. Other honors include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. His other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War(a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He is a University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He has been interviewed by Tavis Smiley, Charlie Rose, Seth Meyers, and Terry Gross, among many others. He is also the author of the bestselling short story collection, The Refugees. Most recently he has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and le Prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book in France), for The Sympathizer. He is the editor of The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives and the Library of America volume for Maxine Hong Kingston. He co-authored Chicken of the Sea, a children’s book, with his then six-year-old son, Ellison, and his most recent book is The Committed, the sequel to The Sympathizer, and his second children’s book, Simone, illustrated by Minnie Phan, an unforgettable story of a Vietnamese American girl whose life is transformed by a wildfire, has just been published.

Minnie Phan is a Vietnamese American illustrator and designer creating visual communications that spark delight. Her debut picture book was The Yellow Áo Dài, written by Hanh Bui. Minnie’s work also includes animation and comics, and she has created art for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Public Library, and a 250 square foot mural for Google among others. Her most recent children’s book publication is Simone, written by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen.

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Viet Thanh Nguyen and Minnie Phan for SIMONE