Bich Minh Nguyen was born in 1974 in Saigon, which her family fled by ship the following year.
After staying in refugee camps in Guam and at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, they settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Nguyen grew up.
[2] She graduated from the University of Michigan with a Master of Fine Arts.
In 2005, she received a PEN/Jerard Award for her 2008 memoir Stealing Buddha's Dinner.
[5] Nguyen married fellow novelist Porter Shreve in 2002.