Providence, R.I. — Author and scholar Phong Nguyen, who won the 2010 Elixir Press Fiction Award for his first short story collection, Memory Sickness and Other Short Stories, will read from his book as part of the Poetry & Fiction series at Providence College on Thursday, October 6. His presentation will be held at 7 p.m. in the Feinstein Academic Center, Room 400, and is open to the public.

Nguyen, who is a 2001 graduate of the Providence College School of Continuing Education, is an assistant professor of English at the University of Central Missouri, where he teaches fiction writing and edits the journal Pleiades. A Vietnamese-American whose father emigrated to the U.S. on a scholarship in 1962, Nguyen also was chief editor of Cream City Review and an editorial assistant at The Atlantic Monthly.

His stories have appeared in more than 30 national literary journals including Agni, Iowa Review, Kenyon, Massachusetts Review, and North American Review, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in every year from 2006 - 2010.

His award-winning collection, Memory Sickness and Other Short Stories (Elixir Press, 2011), is a collaboration of interwoven stories about characters living on the margins of life in Providence, R.I. American novelist Don Lee called it “a truly memorable collection.”

The Poetry & Fiction series is sponsored by the Department of English and co-sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations, the School of Continuing Education, and the American Studies and Global Studies programs.

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