Viet Dinh, assistant professor of English at the University of Delaware and an award-winning short-story writer, has published his first novel, After Disasters, selected as a Kindle First book for August.

The Kindle First program designates a select number of books and makes them available for download a month before their general publication date. After Disasters, published by Little A, the literary fiction imprint of Amazon Publishing, will officially be released Sept. 1.

Dinh will read from After Disasters at a public talk and book signing at 5 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 1, in 123 Memorial Hall on UD’s Newark campus. A reception will follow.

The novel recounts the stories of four disaster assistance workers who travel to India to help after a major earthquake. In preparing to write the book, Dinh said, he did research on disaster assistance and spent time in India, but he also wanted to tell a deeper story about the characters themselves.

“It’s about people doing disaster work, but it’s also about their lives and their internal struggles,” he said. “The four characters bring their own emotional baggage with them to India.”

In July, After Disasters was listed as one of the “Most Anticipated” upcoming books of 2016 by The Millions, an online literary magazine. The magazine quoted author Amber Dermont, who said the novel marked “the debut of a brilliant career.”

Dinh said the book began as a short story but then “blossomed” into a longer and more complex tale told through the eyes of the four international aid workers.

At UD, Dinh has taught fiction writing for several years as an adjunct instructor in English, before being named an assistant professor this year. His stories have been widely published, and he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Delaware Division of the Arts, as well as an O. Henry Prize, considered the nation’s most prestigious prize for short fiction.