Rebellion and Aesthetic Expressions: Book Talk with Phuc Tran and Elizabeth Ai

Rebellion and Aesthetic Expressions: Book Talk with Phuc Tran and Elizabeth Ai, moderated by Thuy Dinh

A Vietnam Week 2024 Event

Come join us at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library for Rebellion and Aesthetic Expressions featuring New England Book Award Winner Phuc Tran (Sigh, Gone and Cranky) and Elizabeth Ai, an Emmy award-winning film director/producer of the acclaimed film New Wave and accompanying book New Wave: Rebellion and Reinvention in the Vietnamese Diaspora. Moderated by Thuy Dinh, Tran and Ai will discuss the recurring themes in their works – linguistic and cultural displacement, memory loss, intergenerational trauma, music and artmaking as both livelihood and self-preservation. Book signing follows. Event is co-sponsored by Vietnam Society, The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library and the Public Library Foundation.

About Phuc Tran

Phuc Tran is an award-winning writer, tattooer, and Latin teacher. Tran is the author of the memoir, Sigh, Gone and Cranky. He graduated Bard College in 1995 with a BA in Classics and received the Callanan Classics Prize. His 2012 TEDx talk “Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive” was featured on NPR’s Ted Radio Hour. He has also been an occasional guest on Maine Public Radio, discussing grammar; the Classics; and Strunk and White’s legacy. He currently tattoos at and owns Tsunami Tattoo in Portland, Maine, where he lives with his family.

About Elizabeth Ai

Elizabeth Ai is a Chinese-Vietnamese-American Los Angeles based Emmy award-winning producer. She writes, directs, and produces independent narratives and is known for New Wave (2024), Crown Prince of Heaven (2010) and There Is a New World Somewhere (2015). She’s a fellow of Berlin Talent Campus, Film Independent, Sundance, and Tribeca. Her film projects are supported by California Humanities, Firelight Media, Knight Foundation, and ITVS. She received her B.A. from the University of Southern California.

About Thuy Dinh

Thuy Dinh is a bilingual critic, literary translator, coeditor of the Vietnamese webzine Da Màu, and editor-at-large for the Vietnamese Diaspora at Asymptote Journal. Her essays and poetry translations have appeared in Asymptote, Manoa, Michigan Quarterly Review, NBC Think, NPR Books, Prairie Schooner, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Amerasia, among others. Green Rice, her co-translation of the selected poetry of Lâm Thị Mỹ Dạ, was published by Curbstone Press in 2005, and nominated for the Kiriyama Prize in 2006.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, G Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA, United States