Cover Release for Lotusland!

I'm thrilled to share the new cover of the re-release of Lotusland, my debut novel that first came out in 2015 with Guernica Editions. Marie Mutsuki Mockett (@mmmockett) was kind enough, after already generously writing a blurb for The Heron Catchers, to recommend to me the book cover designer Kimberly Glyder (@kglyder).

It was a both a pleasure and an honor for me to have Kimberly design Lotusland's new cover, and I'm also pleased to have a series of new blurbs to add to those I received before from Andrew X. Pham (@andrewxuanpham) and Le Ly Hayslip. These blurbs came from Wayne Karlin, Dana Sachs (@dana.sachs), John Balaban, and Michael Tatarski (@mike_tatarski), and I thank them again for taking the time to read Lotusland and endorse it.

Lotusland is set for re-release on March 1, 2025, through an imprint I was behind called Painted Veil Press. The re-issue is slightly revised and twenty pages shorter than the original. The re-release will include a foreword, two interviews (one new and one that originally appeared in Rain Taxi), and an essay I wrote about becoming interested in Vietnam and writing the novel (previously published in diaCritics).

I'd be eternally grateful for those of you who share this with friends who are interested in Vietnam and literature about the country. Even now, nearly 50 years since the end of the war between Vietnam and America, Lotusland remains one of the only works of fiction by a US author to bridge the literary gap between the war and contemporary Vietnam.