He has been a candidate several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. At the request of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, he traveled to Palestine as part of a delegation for the International Parliament of Writers.

Dao was named a presidential lecturer at Stanford and has taught at the University of California, Davis, University of Alabama, University of Notre Dame and Beloit College in Wisconsin. In August 2007, Dao moved to Hong Kong with his family. The November 2008 issue of World Literature Today will include a special section devoted to his life and work.

The Puterbaugh Conferences on World Literature are sponsored by World Literature Today in collaboration with the OU College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Linguistics and Department of English.

Established in 1968 and originally named the Oklahoma Conferences on Writers from the Hispanic World, the series was endowed in perpetuity in 1978 by the Puterbaugh Foundation of McAlester. Each Puterbaugh Conference brings a prominent author to the university for one week of lectures and seminars.

For more information or accommodations on the basis of disability, call World Literature Today at 325-4531. To subscribe to WLT, go to www.worldliteraturetoday.com.