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Biography
Born in Saigon, Vietnam, visual artist, poet and writer Mong-Lan immigrated to the US when she five. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona and has taught English as a second language, poetry writing, and English composition. She has held various other jobs, including washing tent tops for Cirque du Soleil. At Stanford University, she was a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow in poetry. During 2002-2003, she was awarded a Fulbright Grant to Vietnam.In November 2007, the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam sponsored her in a series of lectures on Asian-American literature at Vietnamese universities in Saigon and farther south in the Mekong Delta. She met with Vietnamese faculty, students, and Vietnamese poets. At each university, she gave copies of Why is the Edge Always Windy? as well as donating one to the U.S. Consulate in Saigon, whose library is open to the Vietnamese public.
Awards
- Winner of the 2000 Juniper Prize
- Winner of the 2002 Great Lakes Colleges Association's New Writers' Awards for Poetry
- Finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America.
- Winner of the first prize at the 2006 Ubud Writers & Readers Festival Poetry Slam.
Links
In August 2007, Mong-Lan was a sponsored participant in the Utan Kayu International Literary Biennale, a bi-annual festival that involved eighteen writers from around the world being invited to Indonesia. The festival involved a week of public readings in Jakarta and at the famous Borobodur Temple complex in eastern Java. Representing both the U.S. and Vietnam, Mong-Lan read selections of her work, including poems from Why is the Edge Always Windy? to large audiences.www.monglan.com
Reviews of Mong-Lan's Why is the Edge Always Windy?