To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, DVAN is hosting a landmark event in San Francisco on April 26, 2025. Join us for an unforgettable evening of reflections, poetry and music performances by renowned artists of the Vietnamese diaspora.
Event Details
For media inquiries, please contact DVAN Communications Manager at [email protected].
Reflections, Poetry & Music Performances
Panel Discussion
Viet Thanh Nguyen is a writer, co-founder of DVAN, and professor at the University of Southern California. His debut novel, The Sympathizer, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and numerous other awards. His other books include: Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2016), The Refugees (2017), The Committed (2021), and A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial (2023).
An-My Lê is an award-winning photographer, Guggenheim Fellow, and MacArthur Fellow. Her work often addresses the impact of war on culture and on the environment. Lê says her “main goal is to try to photograph landscapes in such a way that it suggests a universal history, a personal history, a history of culture.” She is currently a Professor of Photography at Bard College, New York.
Moderator
Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Dorothy Borg Associate Professor in the History of the United States and East Asia at Columbia University, specializes in the Vietnam War, U.S.-Southeast Asian relations, and the global Cold War. She is the general editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, 3 vols., as well as co-editor of the Cambridge Studies in U.S. Foreign Relations.
Poetry Reading & Discussion
Alexandra Huynh is a Vietnamese American poet from Sacramento, CA. In 2021, she became the 5th National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States. Her work has been featured by NPR, PBS, NBC, CBS This Morning, The Washington Post, and National Geographic Kids. In 2022, she was featured in “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls” and joined Room to Read. In 2023, Alexandra became the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at the Harvard University Asia Center. She currently studies American and Asian American Studies at Stanford University.
Bao Phi is an award-winning spoken word artist and poet. He is a two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist. His poetry is included in The Best American Poetry 2006 anthology and published widely elsewhere, including in two collections, Sông I Sing and Thousand Star Hotel, and in Poetry magazine, Asian American Literary Review, and The Spoken Word Revolution.
Paul Tran is the author of the debut poetry collection, All the Flowers Kneeling. Their work appears in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. Winner of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Stanford University, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Paul is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Thy Hope Luong is a Vietnamese-American poet, artist, and advocate from San José, CA. She serves as Santa Clara County’s 2023-2024 Youth Poet Laureate, San José D4 Youth Commissioner, and is the executive director of Learn4Justice, a student-led organization teaching underserved youth social justice skills. Her writing and art have been recognized by the New York Times, YoungArts, and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, among others.
Music Performances
Thao Nguyen is a singer-songwriter based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has collaborated on projects with several artists including Merrill Garbus, The Portland Cello Project, and Mirah. Her music is influenced by folk, country, and hip hop. She will be performing on stage with drummer/percussionist Jason Slota.
Emcees
Philip Nguyen is the Executive Director of the Vietnamese American Roundtable (VAR). He holds an M.A. in Asian American Studies from San Francisco State University, where he currently teaches Vietnamese American literature and history. Philip has worked with various community organizations to advocate for and amplify Vietnamese American voices, including DVAN and PIVOT.
Vina Vo is a storyteller and facilitator who aims to bridge the cultural, generational, and geographic divide caused by displacement and diaspora. Vina co-leads and directs a writing program called this is my body to support women of color to write and perform their own solo performance/s. She is the co-editor of the anthology this is my body published by Nomadic Press in 2019. She is working on her first novel. She is the co-founder of the Novalia Collective and Creo Tea & Coffee.
Event Sponsors
Banner photo by An-My Lê, Night Operations I, from 29 Palms, 2003-2004.