The Book of Salt (35 page)

M
ONIQUE
T
RUONG
was born in Saigon in 1968 and moved to the United States at age six. She graduated from Yale University and the Columbia University School of Law, going on to specialize in intellectual property. Truong coedited the anthology
Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose.
Her first novel,
The Book of Salt,
a national bestseller, has been awarded the 2003 Bard Fiction Prize and the Stonewall Book Award–Barbara Gittings Literature Award, among other honors. Granting Truong an Award of Excellence, the Vietnamese American Studies Center at San Francisco State University called her "a pioneer in the field, as an academic, an advocate, and an artist." She now lives in Brooklyn, New York.