DVAN co-founders Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and Professor Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, a pioneer in the field of Vietnamese American literature, met as students at UC Berkeley and were founding members of a San Francisco-based organization called Ink & Blood (active from 1991 to 2000), which was started by radio journalist and writer Nguyen Qui Duc. The mission of Ink & Blood was to promote Vietnamese American writers and poets because Vietnamese American literature was underrepresented in both academia and mainstream culture. After becoming university professors, Viet and Isabelle decided in 2001 to expand the scope of Ink & Blood to include the diaspora at large, hence began the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN). With DVAN, they sought to put theory into practice and to be relevant to their community by empowering and disseminating the voices and stories of diasporic Vietnamese artists. The bulk of the work was done in San Francisco through grassroots community organizing. This was facilitated by Isabelle Pelaud, a professor in the college of Ethnic Studies at SF State University, who led her students to be active agents of cultural and social change by organizing art exhibits, readings, literary and film festivals in San Francisco. In 2007, DVAN was formally established through Intersection for the Arts’ Incubator Program, focusing their efforts on uplifting one of the least supported art forms in America–the literary arts–to affect narrative change in a climate of increasing racial polarization in the United States. In July 2022, DVAN became a 501c3 nonprofit organization, and is now a nationally and internationally recognized organization with comprehensive programs. The Collective project of womxn and nonbinary writers of the Vietnamese diaspora, She Who Has No Masters, was a DVAN initiative until November 2022.

DVAN is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, tax ID# 86-3060756. Donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.