Dec
30
6:30 PM18:30

Screening Event: Poetry + Video Works @ De-Canon Library

  • De-Canon Library @ Milepost 5 (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

SCREENING + TALK

A screening of new and in-progress video + poetry + music work(s), by Dao Strom and Roland Dahwen/Patuà Films and Stephanie Adams-Santos.

Plus we’ll have some space for light discussion on hybrid work, poetry, music, video processes.

“Traveler’s Ode” (by dao strom) is a sung-poem live music recording video, made with Roland Dahwen (director), Edward P. Davee (director of photography), and sidony o’neal (sound recordist). It is part of an ongoing hybrid forms + music-poetry + collaborative art project by Dao Strom that has received funding from a RACC Project Grant (2017) and the Creative Capital Artist Award Program (2016).

Three Moons/Tres Lunas/3つの月 is a two-channel video installation and altar, dedicated to, and made alongside, our elders. It revolves around three exquisite members of our community: Amanda García, Rikuku Heshiki, and Kazumi Heshiki. The project is a continuation of work that Roland Dahwen Wu & Stephanie Adams-Santos have been doing to share their ongoing work around poetry, memory, and honoring our elders.

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DE-CANON END-OF-YEAR SOCIAL

This event takes place at the De-Canon Library @ Milepost 5. Please stay later into the evening to celebrate the year’s end at De-Canon: A Visibility Project with us, as well ! Community social time from ~8PM on.

De-Canon: A Visibility Project is a literary arts social engagement project that takes shape as a “pop-up library” and a website. De-Canon has received support from an APANO Place-Making Grant, the Precipice Fund, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Calligram Foundation.


 
Still from “Traveler’s Ode”

Still from “Traveler’s Ode”

 
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Oct
20
10:00 AM10:00

East Portland Arts and Literary Festival (EPALF)

Literary Panel + Reading

with: Ly Thuy Nguyen (translator); Kaitlin Rees (AJAR Press editor & translator); Genève Chao (bilingual poet & translator); Dao Strom (poet)

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"index for seeing on two shores” : translation, feminism & diaspora

This discussion event will explore the dynamics of translation for women writers of the Asian/SE Asian diasporas. What are the responsibilities of the translator and/or of the publisher who shepherds these translated works into being? How are the dynamics of translation influenced by where the translator is from or is located? What is the relationship between translation and being female, queer, non-binary, or working from the margins? And how is the act/art of translating women writers different from that of translating male writers? What does it really mean to “translate” - another’s words, voice, vision, etc? How do translators and authors ‘speak’ to one another? This panel engages local poet, Dao Strom, with the translator of her bilingual Vietnamese-English poetry book, Ly Thuy Nguyen, and one of the editors, Kaitlin Rees, from Ajar Press, the Hanoi-based press that published her book. Also joining the conversation will be Genève Chao, who is both a translator and bilingual poet.

"để nhìn qua hai bờ:" dịch thuật, nữ luận, và tha hương

Buổi tọa đàm bàn luận về động thái của dịch thuật trong sáng tác của những nữ tác gia thuộc cộng đồng người di cư Á châu và Đông Nam Á. Vai trò của dịch giả và nhà xuất bản trong việc tạo thành những tác phẩm đó là gì? Động thái của dịch thuật chịu sự ảnh hưởng nào từ nơi thổ nhưỡng hay chốn di dời của dịch giả? Đâu là mối quan hệ giữa dịch thuật với bản thể nữ, dị giới, bất-nhị-phân giới tính, hay là tọa lạc tại các bản lề? Và nghệ thuật/hành vi dịch thuật những sáng tác của nữ tác gia sẽ khác với của nam tác gia thế nào? "Dịch thuật" thực chất mang ý nghĩa gì - khi ta "dịch" lời, giọng nói, tầm nhìn của người khác? Dịch giả và tác giả "đối thoại" với nhau như thế nào? Buổi tọa đàm bao gồm nhà thơ sở tại Dao Strom, cùng dịch giả của tập thơ song ngữ Việt-Anh của cô, Ly Thúy Nguyễn, và Kaitlin Rees, một trong hai biên tập viên của Ajar Press tại Hà Nội, nơi đã xuất bản tập thơ. Tham gia buổi thảo luận còn có nhà thơ, dịch giả song ngữ Pháp-Anh Genève Chao.

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Oct
17
6:00 PM18:00

She Who Has No Master(s) @ SFPL / One City One Book

  • Koret Auditorium, Main Library (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

She Who Has No Master(s), a collective of women and gender-nonconforming writers of the Vietnamese diaspora, presents a collaborative poetry performance and readings, in conjunction with One City One Book, San Francisco's citywide book club.

In 2018, Once City One Book is reading The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui. (Find out more at: One City One Book.)

Our lineup:

Thi Bui // Aimee Phan // Mong Lan // Lan Duong // Isabelle Thuy Pelaud // Dao Strom

SFPL Event Page

SWHNMs_asianartmuseum_dao_bw.jpg
SWHNMs_asianartmuseum_aimee_bw.jpg
 
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Sep
29
9:30 AM09:30

Poetics Presentation @ Fall Convergence 2018

  • University of Washington Bothell (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Fall Convergence 2018: Alternating Facts

University of Washington Bothell
North Creek Events Center

Please RSVP here>> 

OVERVIEW

What is the role of creative thinking and writing in an age of alternating facts?

The twenty-first century is increasingly taking shape as a time of human conceit, environmental disaster and political hostility, governed by the concerted effort to undermine the status of facts and truth as consensual markers of social reality. In some ways, it might seem that social and political life have begun to deploy artistic strategies: policy grounded in fiction—with deep irreverence for social, cultural, and environmental consequences.

But art has, in some ways, always been post-truth—allowing creative freedom to invent and interpret facts, sometimes writing fictions, other times rewriting reality proper. As such, it may also be possible that art might have strategies for productive engagement with reality after the death of the fact. Against the neoliberal tendency to evacuate artistic thought from social and political life, perhaps it is in the language of creative writing and poetics that the new codes of social living ought to be written?

Convergence 2018 provides a forum to celebrate the ways that creative thinking and writing can be used to create pressure points on truth and its manipulation—grounded in fiction, poetry, art, and performances that can be such powerful companions to an age of alternating facts because they are situated on nodes of autobiographical intensity, personal speculation, and socially-minded intervention. Differently put, art comes from life—in ways sometimes direct, sometimes ephemeral, but always with a supposition of personal stakes that understands creative practice as a social gesture. This is poetics for the twenty-first century.

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Sep
28
7:00 PM19:00

Elliott Bay Bookstore - Convergence Reading

Alternating Facts: A Convergence Reading

Join panelists and community members for a group reading at the Elliott Bay Book Company.

Featuring performances by: Anida Yoeu Ali, Rebecca Brown, Steven Dunn, Danielle Dutton, Jeanne Heuving, Srikanth Reddy, Natalie Singer, Dao Strom, Pimone Triplett, and Terri Witek

Facebook Event Page

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Creative Minds: Vietnamese Writers of the Diaspora
Jun
9
6:00 PM18:00

Creative Minds: Vietnamese Writers of the Diaspora

Viet Thanh Nguyen, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his bestselling novel The Sympathizer, hosts an evening featuring Vietnamese writers of the diaspora. Representing a variety of genres—fiction, poetry, comics, memoir, children’s literature—these writers are currently fellows at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.

Thi Bui (Berkeley, California), Nam Le (Sydney), Anna Moi (Paris), Hoa Nguyen (Toronto), Nguyen Phan Que Mai (Jakarta), Aimee Phan (Berkeley, California), Bao Phi (Minneapolis, Minnesota), Dao Strom (Portland, Oregon), and Monique Truong (New York) will read excerpts from new work and hold a roundtable discussion sharing their perspectives on the complexities surrounding refugees and immigrants of color. The writers will be part of the upcoming literary anthology Dialogues Across Borders: War and Race for Vietnamese Writers of the Diaspora.


MODERATORS
Isabelle Thuy Pelaud (San Francisco, California)
Lan Duong (Los Angeles, California)
Anh Thang Dao (San Francisco, California)

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Jun
5
to Jun 11

DVAN Dialogues at Djerassi Artist Residency

I'll be writing & participating in dialogues at a writing retreat with other Vietnamese diasporic writers at the Djerassi Artist Residency. An event curated by Viet Thanh Nguyen & facilitated by DVAN (Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network). Writers: Thi Bui, Nam Le, Anna Moï, Aimee Phan, Bao Phi, Monique Truong, Nguyen Phan Que Mai, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Ocean Vuong.

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The Factory 2018 Art Exhibit // Djúpavík, Iceland
Jun
1
to Aug 31
Image-Text, Visual Art, Poetry

The Factory 2018 Art Exhibit // Djúpavík, Iceland

My artwork (photos + text + installation video) are in a group exhibition in Djúpavík in the West Fjords of Iceland this summer. It's an honor to be a part of this very unique, and very uniquely located, show. 

From http://djupavik.is/en/the-factory-art-exhibition/:

The Factory art exhibition will be held in the old fish factory in Djúpavík from June 1 to August 31, 2018. The focal point of the group show is to explore the artists’ personal relation to, and perception of, Iceland. This year The Factory is hosting 16 international artists/artist groups.

Facebook: /thefactorydjupavik
Instagram: #djupavikart
Webpage: djupavik.is

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Dead Time, 2018

Dead Time is a hybrid collage of poetry fragments, image and video meant to evoke the “temps morts” of displacement, or one’s inevitable placement in certain histories. As a Vietnamese-born American, artist Dao Strom’s citizenship in the world is informed by multiple histories of violence. She came to Iceland wondering how it would feel, in her particular body, to stand in a geography quite disparate from those histories. This series is a result of that contemplation. The title Dead Time is a nod toward Korean-American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Temps Morts/Exilée, in which the phrase “temps morts” expresses the liminal state of being indefinitely severed from one’s roots. Three-plus decades after Cha, Dao Strom looks meaningfully toward her as lineage. But Dao Strom marks the beginning of this work, for herself, by initiating it far from the energies of America. She also adds in sound and collaboration.

You can also see pieces from this series online at The Tenderness Project, a curation project by poets Shayla Lawson & Ross Gay.

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May
9
7:00 PM19:00
Literary, Performance, Collaboration

SHAYLA LAWSON BOOK RELEASE PARTY: I THINK I'M READY TO SEE FRANK OCEAN

In support of Shayla Lawson's new poetry book I Think I'm Ready To See Frank Ocean 

Reading and multi-media performance with Shayla Lawson, Dao Strom, and Elena Passarello (in collaboration with Northwest Academy)

@ Literary Arts (925 SW Washington St, Portland OR)

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She Who Has No Master(s) @ United States of Asian America Festival 2018
May
5
to May 6

She Who Has No Master(s) @ United States of Asian America Festival 2018

Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (APICC) presents :

UNITED STATES OF ASIAN AMERICA FESTIVAL 2018 / USAAF 2018

with

SHE WHO HAS NO MASTER(s)

 

May 6 2018 / 11:00am-12pm
Asian Art Museum
200 Larkin St, SF CA 94102

May 5 2018 / 4:00pm-6:30pm
I-Hotel Manilatown Cntr
868 Kearney St, SF CA 94108
(in collaboration with SFSU students)

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Feb
24
7:00 PM19:00
Poetry, Reading Event, Performance

Soap for the Dogs :: Stacey Tran // Book Release Party

I'll be going to Seattle with Vi Khi Nao + Stacey Tran to celebrate the launch of Stacey Tran's debut poetry collection, Soap for the Dogs, published by Gramma Press.

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Join Vi Khi Nao, Dao Strom & Stacey Tran of She Who Has No Master(s) for the launch of Soap for the Dogs. She Who Has No Master(s) is a project that promotes interaction and collaboration between women writers of the Vietnamese diaspora. At this event we will celebrate Stacey Tran’s new poetry collection, Soap for the Dogs, with exercises exploring hunger and food memories through poetry.

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Feb
23
7:00 PM19:00
Poetry, Reading Event, Performance

How to Make Coffee & Other Things w/ She Who Has No Master(s)

Join Vi Khi Nao, Dao Strom & Stacey Tran of She Who Has No Master(s) at the Working Library. She Who Has No Master(s) is a project that promotes interaction and collaboration between women writers of the Vietnamese diaspora. At this event we will celebrate Stacey Tran’s new poetry collection, Soap for the Dogs, with exercises exploring hunger and food memories through poetry.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

How to Make Coffee and Other Things sets out to create an intimate social space for conversation. An ongoing investigation into how objects, individuals, and ideas are interconnected.

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