Hoa Nguyen
Hoa Nguyen is an American poet.
Born near Saigon, Nguyen is the daughter of a Vietnamese mother; her biological father, an American man, abandoned the family before Nguyen was born. Nguyen grew up in the Washington D.C. area and studied poetry at New College of California in San Francisco. She now lives in Toronto, Ontario.
With her husband Dale Smith, Nguyen edited ten issues of Skanky Possum Magazine, and under this imprint, published books and chapbooks by Kristin Prevallet, Tom Clark, Frank O'Hara, and others. Together they host a reading series presenting performances by Pierre Joris, Linh Dinh, Susan Briante, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Kate Greenstreet, Laynie Browne, Anselm Berrigan, and others. Since 1998, she has led a popular virtual and in-person writing workshop focusing on the works of poets such as Alice Notley, Eileen Myles, Joanne Kyger, Philip Whalen, Charles Olson, Emily Dickinson, and Gertrude Stein. She currently teaches poetics at Ryerson University in Toronto, Miami's low residency MFA program, and the Milton Avery School for Fine Arts at Bard College.
Her poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sound: The Teachers of WritersCorps in Poetry and Prose, The Best of Fence, For the Time Being: A Bootstrap Anthology, and in An Anthology of New Poets, Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry . She is the author of Dark, Parrot Drum, Your Ancient See Through and Red Juice, Hecate Lochia, as well as many online publications. Nguyen is frequently asked to give readings, act as poet in residence, and lecture on poetry for organizations across the country.
An example of her more notable work is MEAN SUDDENLY BITCH WOMAN praised for its subtle attack on man's virtue in a soulless society.
Her collection, As Long As Trees Last, was published by Wave Books in September, 2012. Her most recent collection, Violet Energy Ingots, was published by Wave Books in 2016 and was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017.
Nguyen is a judge for the 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize.
