Recorded at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 1, 2015, as part of Lannan’s Poetry Sundays.

Poet Nguyen Phan Que Mai read from her work along with translator and poet Bruce Weigl, and then took questions from the audience.

Born in a small North Vietnamese village, Nguyen Phan Que Mai has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University (UK) and is the author of four books of poems. She has been translated and published in English, Spanish, Bahasa Indonesian, Chinese, Uzbek, and Bengali. Que Mai won some of the top literary awards of Vietnam including the Poetry of the Year 2010 Award from the Hanoi Writers Association as well as the Capital’s Literature & Arts Award. Her latest poetry collection The Secret of Hoa Sen, translated by Bruce Weigl and published by BOA Editions, is said to build new bridges between Vietnam and America – two cultures bound together by war and destruction.

You may listen to the audio of this reading on the Lannan Podcast site or get further information on the Lannan Foundation site.