Andrew Lam w/ Thanh Tân, STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF THE SEA

Journalist, lecturer, and author of Birds of Paradise Lost, Andrew Lam, visits the store to discuss Stories from the Edge of the Sea, a collection that explores love and loss, lust and grief, longing and heartbreaks through the lives of Vietnamese immigrants and their children in California. Lam’s will be joined in conversation by Thanh Tân, a prominent Vietnamese American storyteller, Emmy Award-winning journalist and filmmaker in Seattle

At times humorous and ecstatic, other times poetic and elegiac, the fourteen pieces in Stories from the Edge of the Sea explore love and loss, lust and grief, longing and heartbreaks through the lives of Vietnamese immigrants and their children in California. A younger dancer is haunted by memories of almost dying on a boat when they escaped from Vietnam, a widow processes her husband’s death through frantic Facebook postings, a writer enters an old lover’s home and sees a ghost at twilight. If the human heart is a vast, open-ended terrain, then Andrew Lam’s short stories are its mountains, valleys, and lakes. Together they seek to chart barely explored country.

“Universal and personal.”—Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior

“Will be read and studied for years to come.”—Noël Alumit, author of Music Heard in Hi-Fi

“Taste the desires of comedians, soldiers, tomboys, friends, queers, mothers, and refugees.”—Long Bui, author of Returns of War: South Vietnam

Andrew Lam is a Vietnamese American author and journalist born in 1964 in South Vietnam as Lâm Quang Dũng. The son of General Lâm Quang Thi of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, he lived a privileged life in Đà Lạt, attending Lycée Yersin, until his family fled during the fall of Saigon in 1975 when he was 11. They resettled in California, where Lam initially pursued biochemistry at UC Berkeley but switched to creative writing at San Francisco State University, abandoning plans for medical school. Lam’s writing focuses on the Vietnamese diaspora, exploring themes of identity, exile, cultural hybridity, and the American Dream. His notable works include: Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora (2005), a collection of essays that won the 2006 PEN Open Book Award, delving into his personal struggles as a Viet Kieu (Vietnamese living abroad) and the war’s lasting impact; East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres (2010), essays examining cultural intersections and globalization, named a Top 10 Indie by Shelf Unbound Magazine; Birds of Paradise Lost (2013), a short story collection about Vietnamese immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area, which was a finalist for the California Book Award and won the Josephine Miles Award for fiction; Stories from the Edge of the Sea (2025), his latest collection of short stories exploring longing, immigration, and generational memory, praised for its poignant and universal narratives. As a journalist, Lam began writing for Pacific News Service while in graduate school, earning the 1993 Outstanding Young Journalist Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. He co-founded New America Media, served as its web editor until 2017, and was a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered for eight years. He has also contributed to Huffington Post and lectured at over 40 universities and institutions like the Asia Society and Smithsonian. Lam’s work is celebrated for its poetic yet honest style, blending memoir, fiction, and cultural critique. His stories and essays bridge East and West, offering insights into the Vietnamese American experience while addressing universal themes of loss, belonging, and resilience. He has spoken about how his writing, often in English, has helped second-generation Vietnamese Americans connect with their parents’ refugee experiences, fostering intergenerational dialogue. Lam splits time between the U.S. and Saigon, where he continues to write and research. He is working on a novel.

Thanh Tân is a Vietnamese American storyteller and filmmaker based in Seattle, Washington. An award-winning journalist who started her career in local television newsrooms, her reporting and writing aims to generate conversation and solve problems, resulting in work that has been featured across all platforms, from This American Life and The Texas Tribune to The Seattle Times and The New York Times. As a brand storyteller, she has traveled around the world telling true stories for Microsoft about the impact of tech and joined Starbucks in 2021 to craft mission-driven narratives about the global ritual of coffee as a means to connect people. Her current projects reflect a deep commitment to cultural preservation and community storytelling. She is co-founder and DJ of SEA Vinyl Society, a collective dedicated to preserving and performing analog forms of Asian diasporic music. She is curating Kho Tàng Nhạc Vàng / Vietnam’s Golden Music Archive, a forthcoming multimedia exhibit at ARTS at King Street Station featuring rare vinyl, sheet music, and photographs from South Vietnam’s golden music era. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War’s end in April 2025, Thanh has curated the We Were Soldiers, Too / Chúng Tôi Cũng Là Lính exhibit at Friends of Little Saigon’s Creative Space, featuring portraits by Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Marcus Yam and oral histories of elderly Republic of Vietnam veterans, many of whom fought in the final battle at Xuân Lộc. She is also directing her first independent documentary, Che’s Last Stand, which uncovers the untold Cold War stories of South Vietnamese soldiers and their extraordinary legacies at risk of erasure from history. Learn more at: https://www.thanhtan.co/

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