Viet Dinh

Newark

Masters
Literature: Fiction

By: Gail Obenreder

“I like to move beyond our current understanding of identity and desire and look at how men who love men have been construed in other cultures and historical settings.”

It’s not a surprise to learn that Viet Dinh identifies the common theme running through his work as “disaster.” The accomplished writer grew up in Colorado after his entire family – parents, older brother, and sister – fled as refugees from Vietnam. But Dinh’s definition of “disaster” is not what it might at first appear. He sees it as a spur that “animates the driving force in my creative work: an exploration of how people react in the face of radical change.”

For Dinh, the word “disaster” encompasses a wide range, “from hurricanes and wild fires to intimate calamities like the death of a parent or the disappearance of a child.” His highly praised debut novel After Disasters (2016) was told through the eyes of four people in the wake of the shattering earthquake in Gujarat, India that took the lives of 20,000 people. The novel was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize.

One of his early influences was (like many young readers) comic books, particularly X-Men tales, and in high school Dinh was a fan of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. It was only when he got to college that “I began reading literary fiction in earnest.” Dinh attended Johns Hopkins University and received his MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from The University of Houston, where his thesis was (tellingly) I© Disaster.

A Newark resident, Dinh has lived and worked in Delaware for sixteen years, teaching as an Associate Professor in the University of Delaware’s English Department. He has been writing since he was young, and “despite a few failed side quests” has persevered, and successfully. Initially, Dinh focused on writing short stories, changing from one locale or event to another, seeing that “how we respond to disaster is the story of the human condition writ large.”

excerpt from THE DIRT EATERS:

“Bernhard could no longer smell coffee without thinking of desperation. The train tracks reminded him of a slingshot pulled taut, hurling people across the country. Looking out the flat glass window, he had the sensation that the moon was following him, like a terrible memory. From across the fields, they called his new name until he’d almost forgotten he’d been someone else.”

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In addition to his debut novel, he has published over three dozen short works (fiction and nonfiction) in literary magazines, and his website hosts a substantial blog. Dinh has been awarded multiple artist residencies, and his honors include Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Delaware Division of the Arts (Emerging in 2010 and Established in 2014); Pushcart Prize nominations; inclusion in two editions of Best American Short Stories (Distinguished Story); the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction from Ploughshares; and two O. Henry Prizes.

Despite all his accolades, the Masters Fellowship recipient is still gratified when readers respond (“hopefully positively”) to his work, and he cites his main challenge as what “most artists will reply . . . not enough time!”

As a reader, Dinh focuses on “a lot of fiction in translation,” and at the moment – as he works on another full-length novel – his reading includes a substantial slate of German-language writers like Thomas Bernhard, W.G. Sebald, and Jenny Erpenbeck, as well as Fleur Jaeggy and Dorthe Nors. His current work-in-progress (tentatively titled The Dirt Eaters) follows a post-World-War-I German immigrant family in rural Wisconsin as they confront changing perceptions about their heritage and their way of life.

This second novel is focused on a young man, “queer before the concept of ‘queer’ has been developed,” who negotiates a world where “masculinity is defined by physical action and violence,” and Dinh hopes to use this current Fellowship to complete the ambitious work.

 

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