DVAN's aim is to promote artists from the Vietnamese Diaspora whose work in literature, visual art, film and performance art enriches our communities and strengthens ties between Vietnamese across the globe. We undertake to support this body of work through cultural events, exhibits and publications that explore connections between art and society.
DVAN is international in scope. It provides resources and promotes the work of Vietnamese artists in the United States, France, Canada and Australia, as these countries host the largest Vietnamese communities overseas. It also supports artists who have returned to Viet Nam and produce from that location.
Upcoming Events & News
DVAN is organizing the second San Francisco Vietnamese American Poetry Festival as part of the SF International Poetry Festival (in collaboration with the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library).
Date: April 24,
Time: 7 - 9 PM
Location: Fort Mason Conference Center, Bldg D, Fleet Room
Reception: 9 - 11 PM in Bldg C, Room 165
Our program includes Anh Vu Buchanan, Kim-An Lieberman, Lan Tran, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Andrew Lam and Dao Strom. Viet Nguyen will serve as emcee.
Festival Sponsors: The SF International Poetry Festival, The Center for SEA Studies at UCB, The Asian American Studies Department and The Vietnamese American Studies Center at SFSU, and the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (APICC).
Reception Sponsor: Restaurant “Le Cheval”
Program
Emcee
Viet Thanh Nguyen is an associate professor of English and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, and the author of Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America (Oxford University Press, 2002). He has received residencies or scholarships from the Fine Arts Work Center, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. His short fiction has been published in Manoa, Orchid: A Literary Review, Best New American Voices 2007, A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross-Cultural Collision and Connection, Narrative, and Gulf Coast, where his story won the 2007 Fiction Prize.
Poets & Writers
Anhvu Buchanan's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 580 Split, William and Mary Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Cream City Review, and Parthenon West Review. He is the first place winner of the 2009 Barbie Cage Haiku. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University and working on his thesis/first book on psychological disorders. He lives in San Francisco and co-curates the Living Room Reading series with poet Ric Delia.
Andrew Lam is the author of the memoir - “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora” (heyday books – 2005) and an editor with New America Media. His next book, “East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres” (Heyday Books – 2010) is due out in the Fall 2010.Lam’s essays have appeared widely in many newspapers and magazines, including The Nation, LA Times, and he has provided some 60 commentaries on All Things Considered. His book of short stories, “Birds of Paradise” is due out in 2011. Besides essays, his short stories are widely published
Kim-An Lieberman is a writer of Vietnamese and Jewish American descent, born in Rhode Island and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. Her debut collection of poetry, Breaking the Map, was published in 2008 by Blue Begonia Press. Her poems and essays have also appeared in Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, ZYZZYVA, CALYX, Threepenny Review, and the anthology Asian America.Net: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Cyberspace. A recipient of awards from the Jack Straw Writers Program and the Mellon Foundation for the Humanities, as well as a finalist for the 2009 Stranger Genius Award in Literature, she has been a featured reader at venues including Seattle's Richard Hugo House, Portland's Wordstock Festival, and the Asian American Writers' Workshop in New York. She currently teaches writing and literature, grades 9 through 12, at Lakeside School in Seattle.
Dao Strom has published two books of fiction, Grass Roof, Tin Roof (2003) and The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys (2006), and released two albums, Send Me Home (2004) and Everything That Blooms Wrecks Me (2008). She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, a James Michener Fellowship, and First Prize in The Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award; she performed at the 2006 South by Southwest Music Festival and the 12th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival. Her music and literature have been featured on KQED's "Pacific Time" and WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show. Dao currently resides in Portland, Oregon where she is at work on a narrative song-cycle, Requiem for the Migration & Mother(land)songs, and a third book of prose.
Lan Tran is the writer/performer of three off-Broadway shows, "How to Unravel Your Family," which played to a sold-out audience in the Lincoln Center Theater-produced American Living Room Festival, and "Elevator/Sex" and "SmartAss," which both premiered in New York at the West End Theatre. Her work has also been featured on NPR, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall's REDCAT Theater, and the Ford Amphitheatre Complex. Lan has published short fiction, creative nonfiction, playwriting and poetry in various anthologies and literary journals, most recently A New Literary History of American (Harvard University Press, 2009). She is currently working on two screenplay Mediocre Poker and Sparkly Things.
Trinh T. Minh-ha is a filmmaker, writer, academic and composer. The recipient of several awards and grants (including the “Trailblaizers” Award at MIPDOC, Cannes; the AFI National Independent Filmmaker Maya Deren Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Film Institute, The Japan Foundation, and the California Arts Council), her films have been given thirty-six retrospectives in the US, the UK, Spain, the Netherlands, Slovenia, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Japan and Hong Kong, and were exhibited at the international contemporary art exhibition Documenta 11 (2002) in Germany. They have shown widely in the States, in Canada, Senegal, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as in Europe and Asia (including in Italy, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Japan, India, Taiwan, Jerusalem,. Reassemblage was exhibited at The New York Film Festival (1983) and has toured the country with the Asian American Film Festival among other festivals. Naked Spaces received the Blue Ribbon Award for Best Experimental Feature at the American Int'l. Film Festival and the Golden Athena Award for Best Feature Documentary at the Athens International Film Festival in 1986; it toured nationally and internationally with the 1987 Biennial of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Surname Viet Given Name Nam has received the Merit Award from the Bombay International Film Festival, the Film as Art Award from the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SF Museum of Modern Art) and the Blue Ribbon Award at the American Film and Video Festival. Shoot for the Contents won the Jury's Best Cinematography Award at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival and the Best Feature Documentary Award at the Athens International Film Festival, and toured internationally with the 1993 Biennale of the Whitney Museum. A Tale of Love, has shown internationally in over twenty-four film festivals, including Berlin and Toronto. The Fourth Dimension (Locarno, Viennale, Edinburg, London) and Night Passage continue to exhibit widely (UK, Austria, Spain, Japan, Korea, Shanghai).
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