Radical Poetry Reading with Hoa Nguyen

Poet Hoa Nguyen has had the privilege to work and teach all over the United States and Canada. She is the author of several books including Violet Energy Ingots which received a 2017 Griffin Prize nomination. Her fifth book of poems, A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure was named a finalist for a National Book Award for Poetry and the Governor General’s Literary Award. In 2019, she was nominated for a Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Since 2017, she has served as Associated Faculty of the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA program. Born in the Mekong Delta, Nguyen was raised and educated in the United States and has lived in Canada since 2011.

Cross-genre writer from Long Khánh, Vietnam, Vi Khi Nao is the author of four poetry collections: Human Tetris (11:11 Press, 2019) Sheep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018), Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), The Old Philosopher (Nightboat, 2014), & of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016). Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She was the Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute.

A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Ghost Of (Omnidawn, 2018) and recipient of a 2021 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to winning the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Colorado Book Award, she was also a finalist for the National Book Award and L.A. Times Book Prize. A Kundiman fellow, she is core faculty in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Artist Dao Strom works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author of Instrument (Fonograf Editions, 2020) and its musical companion Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records, 2020); a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (AJAR Press); a memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys and Grass Roof, Tin Roof. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California and lives in Portland, Oregon. She is co-founder of two collective art projects, She Who Has No Master(s), and De-Canon.

Author Souvankham Thammavongsa has released four poetry books, and the short story collection HOW TO PRONOUNCE KNIFE (Little, Brown, 2020).