• Marie J. Langlois Dissertation Prize, Brown University, 2024
• Interdisciplinary Opportunities Fellowship, Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, 2023–2024
• Steven Petrow LGBTQ Fellowship, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, 2023
• Collaborative Humanities Fellowship, Cogut Institute for the Humanities, 2021–2023
• Tennessee Williams Scholarship, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, 2020
• Lambda Literary LGBTQI Emerging Voices Fellow, 2019
• Thomas Tisch Fellowship for Graduate Studies, Brown University, 2018–19
• Bill Waller Award for Non-Fiction, University of Arizona, 2017
• Foundation Award in Creative Nonfiction, University of Arizona
• George Peabody Gardner Post-Graduate Traveling Fellowship, Harvard College, 2014–2015

Thomas Dai is the author of Take My Name but Say It Slow (W. W. Norton, 2025), a collection of essays interrogating travel, place, Asian American identity, and other imperfect means of mapping the self. He primarily teaches courses on creative nonfiction, especially the essay in all its many forms, but is also interested in autofiction, science and nature writing, and writing that integrates visual media. His work has garnered awards and fellowships from Lambda Literary, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and he has published his work in numerous publications. With a background in both creative and critical writing practices, Thomas’s more recent work interweaves creative nonfiction with more scholarly writing to think about the intersections of race, queerness, and ecology. He currently serves as an associate editor at differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies.

• Creative nonfiction
• Travel and place writing
• Literature and race
• Queer theory
• Animal studies

• Take My Name but Say It Slow: Essays, W. W. Norton, 2025.
• Individual essays and criticism have appeared in The Georgia Review, Guernica, Lithub, The Yale Review, New England Review, Conjunctions, The Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, The Southern Review, and elsewhere.