Join us for this special Tuesday evening event celebrating the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network—directed by Isabelle Pelaud, writer and professor of Asian American Studies—shifting its status as an independent organization to become a Center at SF State, joining The Poetry Center, among other campus organizations. Special guests will be DVAN co-founder and Pulitzer Prize novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Thi Bui, author of the celebrated graphic 'novel' The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir. They will be joined by a number of local Vietnamese writers and artists, to be announced. Supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and co-sponsored by DVAN, the Vietnamese Student Association, and The Poetry Center, this event is free and open to the public.
From DVAN's website: "The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN)’s primary mission is to promote voices and stories of the Vietnamese diaspora through nurturing writers, poets and artists, and connecting their work to readers, audience, and diasporic communities all over the globe. We envision a world in which the diversity, complexities, and nuance of Vietnamese diasporic experience and imagination are understood, integrated and supported across national boundaries. We envision a world where our divides are healed, and individuals and communities are empowered and connected. Through nurturing Vietnamese diasporic writers, artists and readers, DVAN reshapes how Vietnamese people are perceived and builds an international, diasporic community of artists in conversation with Vietnamese in Vietnam and with other diasporic communities at large."