Encouraging a remarkable mid-career author to keep on writing

“Kim Thúy’s body of work is original, compelling, and emotionally rendered. Told in a spare, yet poetic style, Thúy’s work harbours an artful exactitude that balances the painful truths of colonization and war, with love and everyday human connection. These sensorily immersive stories of lost innocence, dispossession, the Vietnamese diaspora in Quebec, and human perseverance are ones that stay with the reader. The brilliance of her novels has been brought to a wider readership with Sheila Fischman’s translations. Thúy’s writing challenges the boundaries of genre while her focus on the human plight remains front and centre.” —2025 Engel Findley Award jury (Daniel Grenier, Chelene Knight, and Jeanette Lynes)