Nhã Thuyên - Words Without Borders

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Contributor Nhã Thuyên Image copyright © Đinh Trường Chinh Contributor Nhã Thuyên

Nhã Thuyên has authored several books of poetry, short fiction, and some tiny books for children. Read More Translations of their poetry and writing appear in Poems of Lưu Diệu Vân, Lưu Mêlan & Nhã Thuyên (Vagabond Press, 2013) and in journals including RHINO Poetry, Asymptote, Eleven Eleven, Cordite Review, Sand, Full Stop, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Tongue, Asian American Writer’s Workshop. Nhã Thuyên is co-editor of Poems of Lê Văn Tài, Nguyễn Tôn Hiệt, Phan Quỳnh Trâm (Vagabond Press, 2015). Their most recent poetry book words breathe, creatures of elsewhere (từ thở, những người lạ) was published in Vietnamese (Nha Nam, 2015) and in English translation by Kaitlin Rees (Vagabond Press, 2016). With Rees, they founded AJAR, a small bilingual publisher with an online journal and a mini-poetry festival in Hanoi. Nhã Thuyên is shaping a book of essays on absent presences in contemporary Vietnamese poetry and a book of nonsense poeticized prose for which Kaitlin Rees, the translator, was awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant in 2017.

Articles by Nhã Thuyên

Presences, Ruins, Silences: Writing from Vietnam

By Nhã Thuyên & Kaitlin Rees Silence, among Vietnamese authors, seems to have become a compelling tradition. Translated from Vietnamese by the author Multilingual

(Un)contextualizing Underground Poetry: Reimagining a Critical Community

By Nhã Thuyên I don't want to put underground poetry into a concrete conflict with mainstream poetry. Translated from Vietnamese by David Payne

Nihilism

By Nhã Thuyên I can’t stand that one the way someone with a chronic sinus infection can’t stand abnormal shifts in weather. Translated from Vietnamese by Kaitlin Rees MultimediaMultilingual