Vietnamese American Author, Tattoo Artist to Speak at UMass Lowell

Media contacts: Emily Gowdey-Backus, director of media relations, Emily_GowdeyBackus@uml.edu and Nancy Cicco, assistant director of media relations, Nancy_Cicco@uml.edu 

Latin teacher, tattoo artist and award-winning author Phuc Tran will visit UMass Lowell next month to read from and discuss his work as part of the university’s Writers on Campus series.

Tran is the author of “Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and The Fight to Fit In.” In it, he traces his formative years, recounting his family’s flight from Saigon in 1975 and his arrival in rural Pennsylvania, where he struggled to assimilate into American culture as a son of the only Vietnamese family in town.

“Above all else, I hope my story is an invitation for readers and audience members to share their stories. Hearing others’ stories has been the richest and most unexpected gift from sharing my own story,” Tran said.

Free and open to the public, the program will be held at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7, in O’Leary Library auditorium, Room 222, on UMass Lowell’s South Campus at 61 Wilder St., Lowell. Free parking will be available in the Wilder Faculty Lot across from the venue.

Widely acclaimed, “Sigh, Gone,” received the 2020 New England Book Award for Nonfiction and the 2021 Maine Literary Award for Memoir. Named a best book of 2020 by Amazon, Audible, Kirkus Reviews, among many others, the memoir received starred reviews from Kirkus, BookList, and BookPage, which called it “the best, the funniest and the most heartfelt memoir of the year.” His 2012 TEDx talk “Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive,” was featured on NPR’s Ted Radio Hour. 

Tran holds a bachelor’s degree in classics from Bard College, where he received the Callanan Classics Prize, and a master’s degree from UMass Amherst. Before turning to writing, he built a career as a high school teacher for more than 20 years, having taught Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit at the Collegiate School in New York, where he was also an instructor at Brooklyn College’s Summer Latin Institute. After relocating to Maine, he taught Latin, Greek, and German at the Waynflete School in Portland, where he is highly sought after as an ink artist at Tsunami Tattoo, the family business he runs with his wife Sue. 

“As an alumnus of UMass Amherst, I’m excited to return to and share my story with the UMass community,” Tran said. His forthcoming children’s book, “Cranky,” is a collaboration with bestselling illustrator Pete Oswald.

“We look forward to hosting Phuc Tran,” said UMass Lowell English Professor Maureen Stanton, an award-winning author and writing teacher who focuses on creative nonfiction and literary journalism. “Bringing to campus both emerging and nationally acclaimed poets and prose writers, the English department’s Writers on Campus series gives the UMass Lowell community and the public an opportunity to engage directly with diverse award-winning authors.”

Tran will answer questions from the audience and his books will be available for purchase and signing during the event. The program is presented by UMass Lowell’s English department. Individuals who would like more information may contact Stanton at Maureen_Stanton@uml.edu.