Andrew X. Pham

Who is Andrew X. Pham?

Andrew X. Pham is an author.

Pham trained and graduated from the University of California Los Angeles as an aerospace engineer. He worked at United Airlines as an aircraft engineer before switching career to become a writer while pursuing dual graduate degrees, M.B.A and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering, specializing in orbital debris. His sister's suicide was the catalyst in his pivotal life changing decision.

He writes and lives on the Thai-Laos border in a traditional wooden farm bungalow he built on the Mekong River. He teaches writing and occasionally lead bicycle tours in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. He is at work on a culinary project titled A Southeast Asian Love Affair: My Cookbook Diary of Travels, Flavors and Memories, a literary work that tells the stories of his life in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. He is the author of Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam and The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars. He is also the translator of Last Night I Dreamed of Peace.

Catfish and Mandala won the 1999 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, QPB Nonfiction Prize, and the Oregon Literature Prize.