ARTIST RESUME

contact/booking/info:
gentlesongs 'at' gmail.com


in-progress:
we were meant to be a gentle people - prose/poetry
requiem for the migration & mother(land)songs - a song-cycle & performance piece


books:
The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys (Counterpoint Press, 2006)
Collection of four novella-length stories about Vietnamese-American women navigating the contemporary American landscape, relationships, sexual, cultural, and racial identity.

Grass Roof, Tin Roof (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin, 2003)
Debut novel in the form of linked short stories centering on a Vietnamese family’s resettlement in northern California; an exploration of the myth of westward progress and consequences of cultural displacement.


albums:
everything that blooms wrecks me (2008 -- producer: darwin smith)
send me home (2004 -- producer: brian beattie)


press highlights:
The New Yorker 'Books Briefly Noted' review of Gentle Order
A short artist profile in No Depression Magazine
Interview with Venuszine
WNYC Leonard Lopate Show with guest host Julie Berstein
NY Times Books in Brief review of Grass Roof, Tin Roof


event + performance highlights:
Marvelous Metaphors: Art As Visual Poetry - presented by VAALA (Viet-American Arts & Letters Association) - Santa Ana, CA - 2011
Hallie Ford Literary Series - Willamette University, OR - 2011
The Woods - Portland, OR, 2010
13th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, 2010
Outspoken: Vietnamese Poets of the Diaspora II, sponsored by DVAN (Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network) - San Francisco, 2010
Schuba's (music venue) - Chicago IL, 2009
Hoogland Performing Arts Center (music venue) - Springfield IL - opening for Robbie Fulks, 2009
12th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, 2009
Major cities book tour for The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys, 2006
South by Southwest Music Festival, 2006 (Austin TX)
Texas Book Festival, 2006 & 2003
Dallas Women’s Museum, music & reading performance, 2006
Katherine Anne Porter Reading (KAP) Series, 2005
Cactus Cafe (music venue) - Austin TX, 2004
East Coast West Coast II: Artists of the Vietnamese Diaspora (San Francisco CA), 2004
Dallas Museum of Art: Arts & Letters Live “Literary Café” Series, 2003
Major cities book tour for Grass Roof, Tin Roof, 2003


other media:
Music video for "Caller of Spirit" (filmed in juneau, ak -- dir: kyle macdonald)
Music video for "Jesus song" (dir: kyle macdonald)
Live performance at The Artery in Houston, TX (2009)
"origin tale" on vimeo (visual media sample for requiem project)
Outspoken: Poets of the Vietnamese Diaspora II (poetry & song)
photographed by Denise Prince for "Things I Never Told You"




radio highlights:
3rd Coast Music FAR (Freeform American Roots) Radio Charts - Best of 2008
WNYC Leonard Lopate Show (Jan 2003, Jun 2006)
KPIG Please Stand By with John Sandidge (Sum 2005)
KUT Eklektikos with John Aielli
"Perfume River" (song) & interview on KQED Pacific Time with Nguyen Qui Duc


grants & awards:
Oregon Arts Commission (OAC) Career Opportunity Grant, 2011-12
Invited Applicant to the MAP Fund Grant, 2010
Runner-up for the Dobie Paisano Fellowship, 2006
Recipient: National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, 2004
Recipient: Grant for Literature from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund
Recipient: James Michener-Paul Engle Fellowship from Iowa Writers Workshop, 1998-99
Recipient: Patricia Roberts Harris Fellowship in Fine Arts from University of Iowa, 1995-97
Recipient: First Prize Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction, 1995


teaching resume:
The Attic Institute, Portland OR, fiction workshops "Writing the Lives of Girls and Women" - Using Archetypes of the Feminine and Alice Munro as writing guides
Center for Talented Youth at John Hopkins University, Distance Education Writing Instructor -- 2006 to present
Graduate Fiction Writing Workshop, MFA Fiction Program, Texas State University -- Spring 2005, Guest Faculty
Iowa Writers Workshop, University of Iowa, Graduate Teaching Assistant -- 1997


other affiliations:
DVAN (diasporic vietnamese artists network)
diacritics.org
ADAPT Vietnam | Helping At-risk Girls from Human Trafficking


anthologies, other publications:
“Side of the Road,” an essay, in The May Queen: Women on Life, Love, Work, and Pulling It All Together in Your 30s, edited by Andrea N. Richesin (JP Tarcher/Penguin, 2006).

Novel excerpt from Grass Roof, Tin Roof in California Uncovered: Stories for the 21st Century, edited by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Heyday Books, 2005).

Novel excerpt in Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction: At Home in the World, edited by Jessica Hagedorn (Penguin Putnam, 2004).

“Chickens,” a short story, in Still Wild: Short Fiction of the American West (1950 to the Present), edited by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster, 2000).

“Up Over Boulder Hill” and “Chickens,” short stories, in Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, edited by Barbara Tran (Asian American Writers Workshop, 1998).

“Up Over Boulder Hill,” a short story, First Prize in The Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award; published in The Chicago Tribune Books, 1995.


film projects:
Paper Doll, a 38-min. mock docu-drama (16mm film) (1993) -- writer-director


film festival showings:
NY Underground Film Festival
SF International Asian American Film Festival
NY Asian American Film Festival


education:
University of Iowa, Writers Workshop, MFA in English, 1997
San Francisco State University, B.A. in Film Production, 1993