Monique Truong

Monique Truong is the award-winning author of the bestselling novels The Book of Salt, Bitter in the Mouth, and The Sweetest Fruits. She’s also an essayist, food writer, lyricist/librettist, and intellectual property attorney. Monique and her family immigrated to the United States when she was eight years old. 

Monique's first novel, The Book of Salt, was a national bestseller and the recipient of many awards, including the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fellowship, and an Asian American Literary Award. The Book of Salt was a New York Times Notable Fiction Book, a Chicago Tribune Favorite Fiction Books, a Village Voice 25 Favorite Books, and a Miami Herald’s Top 10 Books, among other citations. Truong’s second novel, Bitter in the Mouth, received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rosenthal Family Foundation Award and was named in 2010 as a 25 Best Fiction Books  by Barnes & Noble, a 10 Best Fiction Books by Hudson Booksellers, and the adult fiction Honor Book by the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association. Among other honors, her third novel, The Sweetest Fruits, received the 2020 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Truong received the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature in 2021. Co-authored with Thai Nguyen, her debut children’s picture book, Mai’s Áo Dài, is forthcoming in 2025.

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