ÁCCENTED w/ She Who Has No Master(s): “Tea & Tarot” Conversation
As we descend from Women’s History Month and ascend towards the spring equinox, ÁCCENTED: Dialogues in Diaspora will be hosted by Hoa Nguyen (A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure, forthcoming from Wave Books) and Dao Strom (Instrument/Traveler’s Ode, Fonograf Editions and Antiquated Future Records), poets from the She Who Has No Master(s) Collective, who will sip tea and read tarot as they talk about their recent and forthcoming projects.
This magical evening will feature Hoa and Dao drawing cards into a vernal equinox spread that transcends time and space, engaging in Walter Benjamin’s intuitive faculty and Carl Jung’s creative thinking. We’ll be interrogating expectations and exposing potentials of creativity, and will also be joined by artist Thi Bui and audience members for tarot readings.
The event is free to the public and will stream live here on Facebook on Friday, March 19 at 5:30 pm PST / 8:30pm EST.
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She Who Has No Master(s) is a collective project of womxn and nonbinary writers of the Vietnamese diaspora who engage in collaborative, polyvocal, and hybrid-poetic works. Through a collaborative writing process and art engagement activities that reach across borders, this project endeavors to bring into concert the voices and experiences of women/womxn and nonbinary writers of the Vietnamese diaspora.
SWHNMs has published collaborative poetry and hybrid art short works in BOMB Magazine and AJAR Journal, and presented readings and poetry performance at Black Mountain Institute, SF Asian Art Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, Reed College, American Library in Paris, and at the 2018 United States of Asian America Festival. In 2020, they held their first exhibition of poetry-artwork at the George S. & Dolores Doré Eccles Art Gallery in Salt Lake City. The collective is currently at work on an anthology of genre-defying works by contemporary Vietnamese and Vietnamese diasporic womxn and nonbinary writers.
Founded in 2015, She Who Has No Master(s) is a project of DVAN (Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network).
About the Guests:
Born in the Mekong Delta and raised and educated in the United States, Hoa Nguyen has lived in Canada since 2011. She is author of several books including Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008 and Violet Energy Ingots which was nominated for a Griffin poetry prize. Her forthcoming book, A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure is a poetic meditation on historical, personal, and cultural pressures pre- and post-“Fall-of-Saigon” with verse biography on the poet’s mother, Diệp Anh Nguyễn, a stunt motorcyclist in an all-women Vietnamese circus troupe. A popular teacher of poetics, Hoa teaches for Miami University’s low residency MFA program; as Co-chair of Writing in the Milton Avery School for Fine Arts at Bard College, and as associated faculty for University of Guelph as well as occasional reading-focused writing workshops that take place in cyberspace.
Dao Strom is the author of the poetry collection, Instrument (Fonograf Editions, 2020), and its musical companion piece, Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records, 2020); a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (AJAR Press, 2018), which was a finalist for the 2019 Firecracker Award in Poetry; a hybrid-form memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West (2015); and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys (Counterpoint Press, 2019, 2006) and Grass Roof, Tin Roof (Mariner Books, 2003). She is co-founder of She Who Has No Master(s).
Special appearances:
Thi Bui‘s debut graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do (Abrams ComicArts, 2017) was selected for an American Book Award, a Common Book for UCLA and other colleges and universities, an all-city read by Seattle and San Francisco public libraries, a National Book Critics Circle finalist in autobiography, and an Eisner Award finalist in reality-based comics. Her short comics can be found online at The Nib, PEN America, and BOOM California.
With curated custom cocktails by mixaphoria: Thuy Phan is the creator of mixaphoria, a virtual bookbar that curates and designs cocktail pairings for books by diverse writers. mixaphoria’s mission is to encourage readers to engage with diverse literature and spark thoughtful discussions. Thuy’s recipes and book reviews for each pairing can be found at mixaphoria.com or on Instagram @mixaphoria. Thuy is also a dancer and lives in MA.
In partnership with:
Eastwind Books of Berkeley has been a major source for Asian American literature, Asian Studies, Language Learning, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Martial Arts books. All books featured in ÁCCENTED are available at https://asiabookcenter.com for a special discounted price.
The Union of North American Vietnamese Student Associations (UNAVSA) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, non-partisan, community-based organization founded in 2004 upon the principle of empowering the next generation of Vietnamese youth with self-awareness, passion for change and propensity for leadership. UNAVSA is a family of Vietnamese youth organizations working together to advance the interests of Vietnamese youth in order to build a stronger Vietnamese community at home and abroad.