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Every three months, DVAN features the work of a different Vietnamese writer, one who is either working in the diaspora or who has returned to Viet Nam. This quarter, our featured writer is Aimee Phan. Aimee Phan is the author of the short story collection We Should Never Meet. The eight linked stories that comprise her chilling debut are inspired by "Operation Babylift," the evacuation of thousands of orphans from Vietnam to America weeks before the fall of Saigon. Moving effortlessly between the war-torn homeland and Orange County's "Little Saigon," Phan chronicles the journeys of four such orphans. Passionate and beautifully written,We Should Never Meet is an utterly fresh reconsideration of the Vietnam War for a new generation and heralds the arrival of one of "the very best of the new wave of Asian-American authors" (David Wong Louie).



Phan was born in 1977 in Orange, Southern California, and attended UCLA as an undergraduate, earning her B.A. in 2000. She initially planned to be a journalist, but did not like the reporting aspect of the work, having to be aggressive to get interviews. She applied and gained admission into the highly prestigious creative writing program at University of Iowa, and earned her MFA in 2002. It was during her time in the graduate program that she wrote We Should Never Meet. According to Elle, she writes with "almost plainsong dialogue and unornamented description that takes you straight to the troubled hearts of these people . . . Phan [builds] an unsentimental, profoundly persuasive portrait of ordinary people making the best of extraordinary, almost inexpressible tragedy." "Remarkable," says the San Francisco Chronicle about We Should Never Meet. "The stories are indelible yet float past you . . . many complicated issues are brought to life here." The Los Angeles Times says that "Phan charts [these] journeys with acuity, sensitivity, [and] wisdom."



Phan teaches full-time. She has taught at the University of Las Vegas and Washington State University. Currently, she is Chair of the Writing and Literature Program at the California College of the Arts in Northern California, where she is also an Assistant Professor. She is working on her second book, a novel about an extended Vietnamese diasporic family that spans 30 years and takes place in Malaysia, France and the U.S. You can buy We Should Never Meet here, and read DVAN's interview with Phan here.