DVAN, the Creative Writing MFA Program at the New School, Poets & Writers, and The Brooklyn Rail, with support from the Authors' Guild and AAWW, present Viet Thanh Nguyen with Cathy Linh Che, Lan Duong, Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, and Monique Truong.
Fifty years since the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War, our panel will discuss two new books about the legacies of displacement and creativity that have profoundly shaped Vietnamese communities worldwide. The Cleaving is an unprecedented collection edited by Pelaud, Duong, and Nguyen, featuring 37 Vietnamese writers on their complex ties to their homeland. To Save and To Destroy: Writing As An Other is a deeply personal and analytical meditation by Viet Thanh Nguyen on the role of literature in shaping solidarity and addressing historical wounds.