The Cline Community Lecture in the Humanities, established and endowed by Platt Cline, Flagstaff and NAU Historian and newspaper editor, has for 42 years brought speakers of international stature to Flagstaff. Cline Lecturers are asked to answer the broadly conceived question of “what is the social usefulness of the humanities? Or “why are the humanities important?”

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s prodigious body of work engages deeply with critical questions in the humanities, reminding us of the urgency of being present in our broader communities. His award-winning duo of novels The Sympathizer (winner of the Pulitzer Prize) and The Committed are set during and after the Vietnam War. April 30th of this year marks 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War, but Nguyen’s writing compels us to remember that wars send aftershocks throughout generations and remain a touchstone for all impacted. Viet Thanh Nguyen non-fiction works include The Refugees; Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, and To Save and To Destroy: Writing as an Other, Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America, his edited volume, The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, as well as an award-winning children’s picture book, Simone, illustrated by Minnie Phan, about wildfires, emergency evacuation, and a shelter stay from the perspective of a young child. Viet emphasizes that “it is through telling stories that we shape our identities…and contest our identities.”