Poetics Across Genres: A Conversation with Vi Khi Nao & Dao Strom

Prolific and multi-faceted writers and artists Vi Khi Nao and Dao Strom will be presenting a variety of work in conversation together with host Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, founding director of DVAN and Professor in Asian American Studies at SF State.

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 (winner of the Nightboat Prize for 2014), and of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), and the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016). Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. The Proscenium, “a satire on production and feminism [that] acts as an antithetical or opposition to male’s prolixity on the canvas of the literary canon,” is just out from Ugly Duckling Presse. Vi Khi Nao was the Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Dao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author of the poetry collection, Instrument (Fonograf Editions, 2020), “an experiment in multimodal poetics—inhabiting a synergistic blend of poetry, music, and visual art,” with 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).

Strom is also the co-founder and creative director of She Who Has No Master(s), a collective project of women writers of the Vietnamese diaspora and a program of the Diaspora Vietnamese Artists Network; and De-Canon, a library/social engagement art project highlighting books and works by writers of color. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Event Details

This remote-access event starts promptly at 2:00 pm Pacific Time, and registration is free and open to the public. For accommodations please contact [email protected]. Supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, this conversation is co-sponsored by The Poetry Center and DVAN@SFSU, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network at SF State.