ÁCCENTED

Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network
  • 5.0 (4)
  • ARTS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Welcome to ÁCCENTED: Dialogues in Diaspora, hosted by Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer, and Philip Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American Studies scholar and community activist. In 2020, DVAN developed and launched ÁCCENTED as a virtual program. Once a month, DVAN presents virtual events accessible to a global audience, showcasing writers, poets, visual artists, actors, filmmakers, and other cultural producers from the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian diaspora, to present their work and discuss topics important to them. Learn more at https://dvan.org/

  1. MAR 27

    Barbara Jane Reyes & Karen Llagas

    Poets Barbara Jane Reyes and Karen Llagas converse with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen. ABOUT THE GUESTS Barbara Jane Reyes, born in Manila and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, is an acclaimed Filipina American poet and author of several books, including Gravities of Center (2003), Diwata (2010), and Letters to a Young Brown Girl (2020), with Daughtersong Diaspore forthcoming in 2027. She has also published chapbooks and numerous poems and essays in major literary journals and outlets. A recipient of awards such as the James Laughlin Award and a Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Reyes holds degrees from UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. She teaches Philippine Studies at the University of San Francisco and lives in Oakland with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo. Karen Llagas’s new poetry collection, All of Us Are Cleaved, is recently published by Nomadic Press in 2023. Her first collection of poetry, Archipelago Dust, was published by Meritage Press in 2010. Other recent projects include translations of Filipino children’s books into English: Dancing Hands: A Story of Friendship in Filipino Sign Language (Chronicle Books, 2023) & How Do You Eat Color (Eerdman’s Book for Young Readers, 2025). A recipient of a RHINO Founder's Prize, Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize & a Hedgebrook residency, her poems, translations, and book reviews have also appeared in various journals and anthologies, including most recently, Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (Paloma Press, 2023). She teaches Filipino at UC Berkeley and divides her time between San Francisco and Los Angeles. You can find more about her at www.karenllagas.com.

    57 min

  2. FEB 27

    Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi & Cathy Linh Che

    Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi, Asian American Studies professor, and Cathy Linh Che, writer and multidisciplinary artist, converse with Viet Thanh Nguyen. ABOUT THE GUESTS: Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi is an associate professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (Tovaangar). Dr. Gandhi’s first book, Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine (University of California Press, 2022), was awarded the 2025 ACLS Open Access Book Prize in History. She is the co-editor with Vinh Nguyen of The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives (Routledge, 2023). She is currently working on a second book project which revisits Gramsci’s “southern question” by constellating the southern spaces of South Korea, South Vietnam, and the US South during the Cold War and its afterlives. Cathy Linh Che is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025), a Finalist for the National Book Award, Split (Alice James Books) and co-author of An Asian American A to Z: a Children’s Guide to Our History (Haymarket Books). Her video installation Appocalips is an Open Call commission with The Shed, and her film We Were the Scenery was shortlisted for an Academy Award and won the Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction at the Sundance Film Festival. She teaches as Core Faculty in Poetry at the low residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Antioch University in Los Angeles and works as Executive Director at Kundiman. She lives in New York City.

    59 min

  3. JAN 23

    Thi Bui & Vu Tran

    Writer and illustrator Thi Bui and writer Vu Tran converse with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen. ABOUT THE GUESTS Thi Bui is a writer and artist from Việt Nam, California, and New York, now planting roots in New Orleans. Best known for her graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, which tells the story of her family amidst Việt Nam's struggles for independence, she has also been a longtime educator in public high schools, a professor of comics, a public speaker, an organizer and artist-activist, an ambivalent sculptor and puppeteer, a fledgling screenwriter, and an award-winning illustrator of children’s books and comics journalism. Vu Tran is the author of Dragonfish, a NYT Notable Book, and a forthcoming novel, Your Origins. His writing has also appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly, and McSweeney’s, among other publications. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the NEA, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Bread Loaf. Born in Saigon and raised in Oklahoma, Vu received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his PhD from the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago, where he is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Arts and director of undergraduate studies.

    55 min

  4. JAN 5

    Bao Nguyen

    Filmmaker Bao Nguyen converses with Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pullitzer prize-winning writer. ABOUT THE GUEST Bao Nguyen is an Emmy- and Grammy-nominated Vietnamese American filmmaker whose work explores memory and myth. His films have premiered at major festivals including Sundance, Cannes, and Telluride, and he directed Be Water, ESPN’s most-watched 30 for 30, and The Greatest Night in Pop, Netflix’s number one English-language film in its debut week and a multi-Emmy, Critics Choice, PGA, and Grammy nominee. His latest film, The Stringer (Sundance 2025), premiered on Netflix on November 28th. A partner at EAST Films and a Gold House A100 and BAFTA Breakthrough honoree, he recently joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

    39 min

  5. 11/17/2025

    Ocean Vuong

    Award-winning writer Ocean Vuong converses with Pulitzer Prize-winning host Viet Thanh Nguyen. ABOUT THE GUEST Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time Is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the American Book Award, he used to work as a fast-food server, which inspired The Emperor of Gladness. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York City.

    57 min

  6. 10/26/2025

    Aimee Phan & Christina Vo

    Writers Aimee Phan and Christina Vo converse with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen in this special live episode, in partnership with KALW. ABOUT THE GUESTS Aimee Phan was born and raised in Orange County, California. She is the author of two books for adults, We Should Never Meet: Stories and the novel The Reeducation of Cherry Truong. Her most recent book is The Lost Queen, the first book in a young adult fantasy duology. She has received fellowships and residencies from the NEA, MacDowell Colony, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Djerassi and Hedgebrook. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Time, USA Today and CNN.com among other publications.  Christina Vo is the author of My Vietnam, Your Vietnam and The Veil Between Two Worlds. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Drawing from her Vietnamese American heritage and a life lived across cultures, her work explores identity, belonging, inherited trauma, and emotional transformation.

    53 min

  7. 09/26/2025

    Cathy Linh Che & Christopher Santiago

    Cathy Linh Che and Christopher Santiago converse with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen. ABOUT THE GUESTS Chris Santiago is the author of Small Wars Manual, forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in April 2025, and Tula, winner of the 2016 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry and a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. His poems have appeared in POETRY, Conduit, Copper Nickel, Poetry Northwest, Beloit Poetry Journal, American Public Media’s The Slowdown, and elsewhere. The recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, the Mellon Foundation/ACLS, and Kundiman, he is a graduate of Oberlin College and received his PhD from the University of Southern California (USC)’s Literature & Creative Writing Program. He teaches creative writing, sound studies, and Asian American literature in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts and has also taught at USC and at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Cathy Linh Che is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025), Split (Alice James Books) and co-author, with Kyle Lucia Wu, of the children’s book An Asian American A to Z: a Children’s Guide to Our History (Haymarket Books). Her video installation Appocalips is an Open Call commission with The Shed NY, and her film We Were the Scenery won the Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction at the Sundance Film Festival. She teaches as Core Faculty in Poetry at the low residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Antioch University in Los Angeles and works as Executive Director at Kundiman. She lives in New York City.

    57 min

  8. 09/05/2025

    Abbigail Rosewood, Travis Snyder, & Katherina Nguyen

    Abbigail Rosewood, Travis Snyder, and Katherina Nguyen converse with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen. ABOUT THE GUESTS Katherina Nguyen is a creative technologist building ways to better connect with the past and future. She led high-impact design systems development for organizations like Harvard Kennedy School and Google, and currently works on AI storytelling tools at Meta. A Bay Area native and 1.5 generation Vietnamese-American via the H.O. program, she has been exploring her evolving diaspora identity through poetry and narrative essays. With DVAN, Kat leads the Texas Tech publishing series and upcoming Mapping the Diaspora project. Abbigail N. Rosewood was born in Vietnam, where she lived until the age of twelve. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her debut novel, IF I HAD TWO LIVES, has been hailed as “a tale of staggering artistry” by the Los Angeles Review of Books and “a lyrical, exquisitely written novel” by the New York Journal of Books. The New Yorker called it “a dangerous fantasy world’ that ‘double haunts the novel.” Her short fiction and essays can be found at Electric Lit, LitHub, Catapult, The Southampton Review, The Brooklyn Review, Columbia Journal, The Adroit Journal, among others. In 2019, her hybrid writing was featured in a multimedia art and poetry exhibit at Eccles Gallery. Her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best American Short Story 2020. She’s the founder of Neon Door, a forthcoming immersive literary exhibit. Travis Snyder is the acquisitions editor at Texas Tech University Press, working on scholarly and literary genres. He has a PhD in 20th century American literature and postmodern theory. He has taught at Trinity University and the University of Texas - San Antonio. This episode is sponsored by AppLovin. AppLovin’s leading marketing platform provides developers a powerful set of solutions to grow their mobile apps. AppLovin’s technology platform enables developers to market, monetize, analyze and publish their apps. The company’s first-party content includes over 200+ popular, engaging apps and its technology brings that content to millions of users around the world. AppLovin is headquartered in Palo Alto, California with several offices globally. Learn more at ⁠⁠applovin.com⁠⁠.

    1h 2m
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

Welcome to ÁCCENTED: Dialogues in Diaspora, hosted by Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer, and Philip Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American Studies scholar and community activist. In 2020, DVAN developed and launched ÁCCENTED as a virtual program. Once a month, DVAN presents virtual events accessible to a global audience, showcasing writers, poets, visual artists, actors, filmmakers, and other cultural producers from the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian diaspora, to present their work and discuss topics important to them. Learn more at https://dvan.org/

Information

  • Creator
    Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    66
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network
  • Show Website
    ÁCCENTED

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