Celebrate the San Francisco launch of 
The Cleaving: Vietnamese Writers in the Diaspora
, the first and only book to gather the voices and perspectives of Vietnamese diasporic authors from across the globe, with Viet Thanh Nguyen, Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Lan Duong, Aimee Phan, and Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai.
The Cleaving
 brings together Vietnamese artists and writers from around the world in conversation about their craft and how their work has been shaped and received by mainstream culture and their own communities. This collection highlights how Vietnamese diasporic writers speak about having been cleaved—a condition in which they have been separated from, yet still hew to, the country that they have left behind.
Composed of eighteen dialogues among thirty-seven writers from France, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Canada, Australia, Israel, and the United States, the book expands on the many lives that Vietnamese writers inhabit. The dialogues touch on family history, legacies of colonialism and militarism, and the writers' own artistic and literary achievements. Taken together, these conversations insist on a deeper reckoning with the conditions of displacement.
Co-presented by the 
Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN)
.
Photos and/or video may be taken at the event.
About the Speakers
Editors
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 
novel The 
Sympathizer
 is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His other books are 
Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War
, 
Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America
, 
The Refugees
, 
The Committed
, and 
Simone
. He co-authored 
Chicken of the Sea
, a children’s book, with his then six-year-old son, Ellison, and is the editor of 
The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives
 and the Library of America volume for Maxine Hong Kingston. His next book is 
To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other,
 forthcoming from Harvard University Press in 2025. He is a University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California.
Isabelle Thuy Pelaud 
is Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN). She is also a member of the organization’s Editorial Committee. Isabelle is a Professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. Isabelle is the author of 
This Is All I Choose To Tell: History and Hybridity in Vietnamese American Literature 
and numerous academic essays. She co-edited 
Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora
 and 
The Cleaving: Vietnamese Writers in the Diaspora
 from UC Press. Isabelle received a BA in Cultural Anthropology and a PhD in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley.
Lan Duong 
is Associate Professor in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. Her poetry has appeared in the journals 
Oberon 
and 
Spoon River Review
 as well as the anthologies 
Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose
 and 
Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing
. Her debut collection of poetry,
 Nothing Follows
, was published by Texas Tech University Press in 2023.
Contributors
Aimee Phan
 is the author of two books, 
We Should Never Meet: Stories
 and 
The Reeducation of Cherry Truong
. She has a young adult duology, 
The Lost Queen
, forthcoming from Penguin/Putnam in May 2025. Her writing has appeared in T
he New York Times, Time
, 
USA Today
 and CNN. She has received residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, Djerassi and the Bellagio Center. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.
Nguyễn 
Phan Quế Mai
 is the author of thirteen books in Vietnamese and English, most recently the global bestselling novels 
The Mountains Sing
 and 
Dust Child
, and the forthcoming poetry book 
The Color of Peace
. Her writing has been translated into more than twenty-five languages and has received the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, the International Book Award, the BookBrowse Best Debut Award, the Lannan Literary Fellowship in Fiction as well as Runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She has a Ph.D in Creative Writing from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.
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Time:	Apr 12, 2025 (UTC-7) ENDED
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The Fairmont Heritage Place Ghirardelli Square

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Four Seasons Hotel Embarcadero

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Alcatraz Island

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Lombard Street

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