I’m an imagist, a persona & confessional poet and an artist & designer. I’m the youngest of three daughters, a collector of small bowls and a lover of Vietnamese food. I hold a Bachelor of Science from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications (degree in Advertising), and a Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing (dual-genre terminal degree in Poetry & Fiction). My work explores the subjects of abjection, feminine identity and the Southeast Asian diaspora experience.
Before this life, where I scratch out a living as a poet, I was once an art director for a marketing & design agency, where I specialized in the positioning and launching of new medical devices; after that, I was the creative director & owner of a boutique graphic design agency in the Silicon Valley, California that supported clients in the technology, medical and nonprofit sectors.
I’m currently editing a collection of haiku and senryū and working on a poetic memoir about girlhood, a hybrid book that includes poetry, prose and art.
I was born in Sa Đéc, Việt Nam, a French colonial town south in the Mekong Delta. This was where I learned to walk, talk, read and love the natural world; where I climbed trees and fell out of trees, where I was bitten by leeches and fire ants, where I taught myself to ride a bicycle, drawing concentric circles in the dirt around a centipede-infested tree trunk.
During the monsoons, delta rain came down suddenly and in warm sheets; the soil steamed, released a fertile mud odor that penetrated all senses and can never be forgotten. On humid nights, fireflies lit up the dark countryside and a symphony of frogs and crickets provided the soundtrack for my childhood sleep.
On the morning of my ninth birthday, I carried a child-size, cerise-colored suitcase and left on a journey that eventually led me to California. On the walk to fetch the xích lô driver, a stray dog bit my right butt cheek; we both yelped and hollered—one with pain and fright, the other with surprise and mild curiosity. A shaving of my flesh stayed wedged between the dog’s teeth as it trotted off and disappeared into the bustles of the day. When I look back on that moment, I’m grateful to have given a piece of myself to my birth place.
My poetic instincts are rooted in the malleable redness of Sa Đéc clay and in the vibrations of a scarred land that is now both intimately familiar and foreign to me. It is the poetry of the body and of the gut.
