“Like a strip of curtain between the dead and the living, Fire Summer is at once ephemeral and expansive. A haunting debut from a writer whose characters, lovingly described, pass not only through rivers and airports, but also despair and separation. We are ferried with them to the other side – one where the fractured are […]
Sunday, December 16, 2019 ∙ 4:30-6:00 PM da Shop 3565 Harding Avenue, Honolulu, HI 96816 ◆ March 4, 2019 – March 7, 2019 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) San Antonio, Texas
By boat, train, plane, or royal rock elephant, I will be there. Will you? Sept. 15. Shakespeare & Co., New York, NY, “Words in Honor of Paul Lyons,” with Nick Lyons and D. Nandi Odhiambo. Sept. 16. Trident Booksellers, Boston, MA, with Alan Lightman. Sept. 17. KGB Bar, New York, NY, with Johanna Stoberock and […]
I was born in central Vietnam, grew up in the northeastern US, and now live in Hawaiʻi. I received my BA in creative writing from Hamilton College, MA in second language studies and PhD in English from UH Mānoa. My debut novel, Fire Summer, is a revision of my dissertation, part of which appeared in Lost Lake Folk Opera in […]
Where the stream emptied into a lake, she saw a footbridge swaying in the breeze. Go across the bridge to the marketplace. She looked around. She heard the buzzing of a market and smelled roasted meat. She crossed the footbridge. The open marketplace spread along the lakeside. “Mua đi! Mua đi!” a blind peddler cried, clutching her basket of […]
The story of Hòn Vọng Phu, a wife who turns into stone waiting for her husband’s return, shapes and is shaped by the physical terrains of Vietnam and its people’s artistic expressions. In all four provinces, from central highland Vietnam to its northern border with China, stands a wife rock atop a mountain cradling a […]
A folk hero of Vietnam, Trạng Quỳnh has bequeathed laughter to generations of Vietnamese. This folk character is based on a historical figure, Nguyễn Quỳnh who lived during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Trạng Quỳnh exploits the polyglossic and heteroglossic conditions of Vietnam, a boundary-crosser who disrupts and transforms the established Truth of […]
To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour –William Blake
