Join us for an afternoon with acclaimed writers Mong-Lan and Abe Louise Young. Mong-Lan and Abe Louise will read from their recent work, and Mong-Lan and dance partner Stephen Shortnacy will also give us a demonstration of the Argentine tango!
Mong-Lan, Vietnamese-born multi-disciplinary American artist, poet, writer, painter, photographer, musician, singer, dancer and teacher of Argentine tango, left her native Vietnam on the last day of the evacuation of Saigon. Winner of a Pushcart Prize, the Juniper Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Awards for Poetry, and other awards, Mong-Lan’s poetry has been nationally and internationally anthologized to include being in Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Book of Poetry: Best Poems from 30 Years of the Pushcart Prize.
She is the author of eight books and chapbooks which contain her poetry and artwork—the most recent of which is One Thousand Minds Brimming: poems & art. Other books include Song of the Cicadas (Juniper Prize, finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award); Why is the Edge Always Windy?; and Tango, Tangoing: Poems & Art. A Wallace E. Stegner Fellow in poetry for two years at Stanford University and a Fulbright Fellow in Vietnam, Mong-Lan received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona. She has taught at the University of Maryland in Tokyo, Stanford University, and the University of Arizona. She is currently working on a novel, books of poetry, books which contain her artwork, etc.
Abe Louise Young is an award-winning poet and educator whose work explores creative contact and liberation. She lives in Austin, Texas and holds an MFA from the University of Texas, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow in Writing. Her poetry/essays have recently appeared in The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor, Massachusetts Review and more than thirty other publications. She has won a Narrative Story Prize, an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Grolier Poetry Prize and others. Her books include Queer Youth Advice for Educators: How to Respect and Protect Your LGBT Students (2011), a chapbook of poetry, Ammonite (2010), and Hip Deep: Opinion, Essays, and Vision from American Teenagers (2005).