Residencies

DVAN 2023 Writers’ Retreat in Southern France

La Maison du Pont Vieux BridgeWe are thrilled to announce the first cohort for the DVAN Writers’ Residency in France, funded by the Luce Foundation. The two-week residency was held from September 1-14, 2023, at La Maison du Pont Vieux in the beautiful village of Cazilhac in the Occitania region of Southern France.

The 2023 DVAN Writers’ Retreat in Southern France was designed to create a relaxing environment and rejuvenating experience, allowing our writers to connect and exchange ideas. The magic of this residency lies in the freedom to come together and create connections, be they artistic, communal, spiritual, or otherwise!

The residency culminated with a large public event and reading, co-sponsored by ICI Vietnam, at the Jean-Pierre Melville Library in Paris on September 15, 2023.

The 2023 Cohort

Doan Bui

France

Memoirist, author of My Father’s Silence

Thi Bui

USA

Graphic Artist, author of The Best We Could Do

Nguyen Qui Duc

Vietnam

Memoirist, author of Where the Ashes Are: Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family

Anna Moï

France

Novelist, author of Black Rice

Hoai Huong Aubert-Nguyen

France

Novelist and Poet, author of Leaves in the Wind

Vaan Nguyen

Israel

Poet, author of The Truffle Eye

Bao Phi

USA

Spoken-Word Poet, author of Song | Sing

Thuân

France

Novelist, author of Chinatown

Paul Tran

USA

Poet, author of All the Flowers Kneeling

Vu Tran

USA

Novelist, author of dragonfish

Thank you so much, from the very bottom of my heart, for the chance to meet and spend time with you as part of this spectacular residency in France. It’s so clear not just from much labor but also how much heart you put into making this historic gathering possible, and I will always be in your debt for the love you give to bring us all here--and making all the magic and conversations and memories and art began around the kitchen table, something, I know, will endure and last forever.”

Paul Tran

France Residency Fellow, 2023

I’d like to offer my heartfelt thanks to the Luce Foundation for their generosity and support of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network. My two weeks at the DVAN Artist Residency in Cazilhac, France was a genuinely transformative experience for me. I not only made important progress on my writing, but also had an incredibly joyful and enlightening experience with all my fellow Vietnamese writers from America, France, and Israel. I learned so much about them, about myself, and all the similar and different, surprising and unsurprising, ways we’ve all negotiated our lives as artists and diasporic Vietnamese people. I will take the experience with me long into the future, and it will undoubtedly help me in my writing and in my life, so I’m very grateful for the Luce Foundation’s contribution to that.”

Vu Tran

France Residency Fellow, 2023

Related Articles

DVAN Residencies at Millay Arts

Millay Arts in Fall In partnership with Millay Arts and launched in 2022, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) offers annual short-term artist residencies to nurture and stimulate emerging and established writers of the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian diaspora. The 2022 Artist-in-Residence was Ly Ky Tran, author of House of Sticks, and the 2023 Artist-in-Residence was Vivian Pham, author of The Coconut Children. We are grateful and honored to continue to collaborate with Millay Arts, one of the nation’s leading and most established residency programs. Located in the Hudson Valley, nestled against the Berkshire foothills of Austerlitz, New York, Millay Arts’ seven acres border the beautiful Harvey Mountain State Forest and the home and gardens of the famed early 20th-century poet, activist, and Pulitzer Prize winner Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The 2023 Cohort

Luce – Global Collective Residency

The DVAN-Luce Global Collective Residency for Women & Nonbinary Writers brought together a cohort of international and US-based diasporic Southeast Asian/ Vietnamese writers who identify as female or nonbinary. The residents were selected through a juried process for a fully funded two-week stay at Millay Arts in upstate New York from November 27-December 12, 2023.

The collaborative and community-focused opportunity was made possible by a generous grant from the Luce Foundation, for which DVAN is deeply grateful.

Thanh Bui

Austin, TX

Si-Min Chong (Min)

Providence, RI

Lan P. Duong

Pasadena, CA

Carolyn Huynh

Los Angeles, CA

Amy Lam

Portland, OR

Susan Lieu

Seattle, WA

Mai Tran

Queens, NY

After participating in this residency, I have a renewed sense of energy and am so excited for the future of Southeast Asian art. I'm grateful to DVAN and all the cohort members for their trust and generosity.”

DVAN-Luce Global Collective Residency participant

DVAN-Millay New Author Residency

The DVAN-Millay New Author Residency is a special partnership with Millay Arts to celebrate and uplift one author who recently published their first book. For this residency, a new author was selected through a juried process for a one-month residency.

Vivian Pham

Western Sydney, Australia

Ly Tran

New York, New York

I’ve fallen back in love with writing. And the other residents have become another family!”

Vivian Pham

DVAN-Millay New Author Residency Fellow, 2023

I’ve been back from Millay for quite some time now, enough to readjust to “the real world.” I found myself thinking one afternoon, gosh, if only there was a mountain I could hike right this moment! If only I was surrounded by beautiful mossy woods with placards of poetry strewn throughout...if only I had the spirit of [Edna St.] Vincent to guide and inspire me...And then I realized that I could still conjure it all, that the magic of those four glorious weeks has never left me. I am still there, dancing along Poet’s Trail, spellbound, dreaming.”

Ly Tran

DVAN-Millay New Author Residency Fellow, 2022

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Djerassi/DVAN Retreat & Residency

Djerassi residency view of ocean

The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) in partnership with the Djerassi Resident Artists Program offers nurturing, stimulating short- and long-term artist residencies for emerging and established writers of the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian diaspora annually. This generous collaboration with one of the nation’s leading and most established residency programs began in 2018, upon an invitation from Djerassi director Margot Knight to Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Djerassi resident artist alumni. The beautiful Djerassi Artists residence is located an hour South of San Francisco, on a 583-acre ranch above the crest of the Santa Cruz mountains, with views to the Pacific. Our residencies at Djerassi include:

  • A one-week retreat for 10 writers, poets, or artists
  • A one-month solo residency for an emerging writer, poet, or artist

I felt supported by DVAN, especially meeting Isabelle Pelaud and Kathy Nguyen on Friday my first week at Djerassi - their visit helped me feel grounded in a new environment and I felt affirmed. To receive support from a national/global organization like DVAN means that the work I am doing to lift up Laotian and Southeast Asian stories in American theater is necessary and valued.”

Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay

DVAN-Djerassi Artist Resident, October 2023

In September, I will be starting a fellowship at Stanford, so I knew that when I left Minnesota to attend a month-long DVAN residency at Djerassi, I was also leaving for the foreseeable future. I packed up my entire apartment, filled my car with as much stuff as I could, and drove to California from Minneapolis. Djerassi, compared to the flat plains of the Midwest, couldn’t be any further from the familiar, but it has been the perfect place for me to gather myself as I transition into the unfamiliar. It’s beautiful here. I’ve never seen any place like it. After dinner, we’d hike up the big hill to see the sunset above the fog line. Even my writing is inspired by the unfamiliar as I find myself exploring new genres. It’s been exciting. I don’t really know what I’m doing. But I’ve also learned here that you can be surprised by everything, even the things right in front of you. I say this as I learned that what I thought was the blue sky just beyond the mountaintops, is actually the ocean.”

Hieu Minh Nguyen

DVAN Djerassi Artist Resident, August 2019

Other Writers Retreats & Gatherings

DVAN connects writers and artists with patrons worldwide who are interested in hosting members of our network for the purpose of dialogues, collaborations, and work.