1975 VERSUS TODAY: THE EARLY JOURNALISTIC CAREER OF "NGUYEN DUONG" VERSUS NOVEL WRITING

NOTE FROM WENDY N. DUONG:  In 1975, the year that no Vietnamese American should forget, I was Nguyen Duong at Southern Illinois University.  That was my by-line.  My writing was first recognized by the journalism professors at SIU.  (I brought this real-life experience into the creation of my fictitious character Mimi in "Mimi and Her Mirror.")  Below is the trace of my debut into the world of small-town journalism.  It was not until 1998, when I took my first "early retirement" at age 40,  that my fiction writing first received some recognition, this time from the two bar associations to which I sent my short story, "The Young Woman Who Practiced Singing." Acting independently, they each gave me a writing award in 1998.
I sent the story to Pulitzer author Robert Olen Butler, who called and gave me my first lesson in creative writing over the phone. He also wanted me to undertake MFA studies under him in Louisiana, an opportunity that I could not afford to pursue then.