Andrew X. Pham
Andrew X. Pham (born 1967) is a Vietnamese American author.
Pham was born in Vietnam in 1967 and moved to California with his family in 1977 as one of the Vietnamese boat people. His father Thong Van Pham, who worked for the US during the Vietnam War, was imprisoned in a re-education camp after the war by the Communists. Andrew wrote a biography of his father in The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars (2008).
(Excerpt from Catfish and Mandala)
Pham graduated from UCLA as an engineer but later gave up his high-paying job to bicycle through all the western states, part of Japan and finally, most of Vietnam in a whirl-wind bike adventure tour. He lives in San Jose and is the author of Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam (1999). Catfish and Mandala was the winner of the 1999 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize.
Notable awards include the Kiriyama Prize, Whiting Writer Award, QPB Nonfiction Prize, Quality Paperback Book Prize, Guardian Shortlist Finalist, New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Barnes & Noble Discovery Book, a Border’s Original Voices Selection, Oregon Literature Prize, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation 2009 Fellowship for nonfiction.
