Maria Nguyễn is a Vietnamese American novelist and former investigative features reporter. Raised in Garden Grove, California, she studied environmental science at UC Davis and earned an M.A. in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. For nearly a decade she covered chemical safety, energy, and water policy across the Gulf Coast, with bylines in Texas Monthly, The Atlantic, and High Country News. Her reporting received regional press honors and a national science-writing citation for a series on refinery accidents in Port Arthur.
Her fiction often blends industrial landscapes with intimate suspense. She is the author of the short story collection Salt-Bright and the novel Faultline Motel, which was longlisted for the Strand Critics Award. Maria Nguyễn lives in Houston with her partner and an elderly blue heeler, and she teaches narrative nonfiction workshops at Rice University.
