ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE OF WRITING
The Writers Post
    LITERATURE & LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION
VOLUME 7 - NUMBER 2, JUL. 2005

Copyright © The Writers Post 1999-2005.

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ISSN 1527-5469 – US-based, founded 1999. Founder & Editor: N. Saomai

               Current issue: VOLUME 7 -NUMBER 2, JUL 2005

 

 Spring Flowers, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches by Nguyen Khai

 

About the  artist:  NGUYEN KHAI, pseudonym of Buu Khai, born in Hue in 1940, graduated from the National School of Fine Art in 1963, won the Bronze medal at a Spring Art Exhibition in Saigon even before his graduation. One of the founders of the Young Vietnamese Artists Association -- an active and well-known artist group -- in the early 60's, Nguyen Khai committed himself to painting and found it his only way to probe the depth of reality, his inner state, and to pursue the marvellous. While still in his twenties, he became one of the most famous artists in Vietnam. The fall of the South Vietnam forced him to flee his country in 1981, and settled in the American State of California. The painter resumed his painting, and exhibited regularly since then. His most recent exhibitions were at Hoa Mai Gallery, Paris, French (2004), and Viet Art Gallery, Houston, Texas, USA (2005).

-----> Art: Spring Flowers, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches

˙ RETURN TO CONTRIBUTORS ˙

 

TWP’s Sister magazine: 

WORDBRIDGE (ISSN: 1540-1723).

WORDBRIDGE, established 2002 by N. Saomai, published in the US, the first English-language literary magazine from the Vietnamese literary community, is a magazine of literature in translation, and a magazine for literary works of quality originally written in English by established and new writers, edited by the same editor of the Song-Van (ISSN: 1089-8123) and The Writers Post (ISSN: 1527-5469). Wordbridge contains selected literary pieces in a variety of genres: fiction (short stories, excerpts from unpublished novel), poetry (rhymed poems, free verse), translations, reviews, literary critiques, and essays on literature and art.

       

 

        N. SAOMAI, WORDBRIDGE, PREMIER ISSUE, SPRING 2002:  Wordbridge is a magazine of literature and literature in translation. Its aim is nothing less than to bring to the reader literary works from established and new writers, in the original language and in translation. Its part in translation is to introduce a foreign literature to those who appreciate not only the enjoyment of reading, but also the knowing and understanding of other cultures. The magazine is published biannually. It features selected pieces in a variety of genres, and will includeľ apart from its main contents, reviews, criticism, and essays.

   For the past two years I've had the opportunity to introduce to the online reader some English translations of fiction and poetry from Vietnamese authors through The Writers Post magazine at www. thewriterspost.net. This electronic literary magazine was launched on July 1999, with an emphasis on what the Wordbridge intends: to bring to readers who may want to read the literary works originally written in the Vietnamese language for long entrenched behind the barrier of language. Both magazines are under my editorship, and will work in association with each other ( MORE…)

 

WORDBRIDGE is available from major universities and library collections:

 THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Request in: Jefferson or Adams Bldg General or Area Studies Reading Rms

 CORNELL UNIVERSITY Request in: Kroch Library Asia 

 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Request in: Widener Harvard Depository 

 YALE UNIVERSITY Request in: Southeast Asia Collection.

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE  Request in: UC Irvine Library.

 POETS HOUSE 72 Spring Street, 2nd fl, New York, NY 10012

 KYOTO UNIVERSITY [Japan] Request in: Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
                                           

 

                ˙ RETURN TO CONTRIBUTORS ˙

_____________________________________________________

 

THE WRITERS POST

VOLUME 7 – NUMBER 2 OF JUL 2005

 

Editorial note: Most of the works published in this electronic magazine are simultaneously published in the printed Wordbridge (ISSN: 1540-1723), and vice-versa.

The author’s biographies, the notes on contributors published in THE WRITERS POST and simultaneously in the WORDBRIDGE are written by N. Saomai, the editor of the magazines. In The Writers Post, there are three sections in which an author’s biography or a note on the author appears: the issue itself, the author’s bio section, and the list of Vietnamese poets and writers abroad. The author’s bios are subject to change where needs be to bring factual information on the authors published in The Writers Post up to date. We thank the writers published in The Writers Post who grant the magazine permission to publish their photographs along with their works or their bios.

 

 

 

Editorial Page & Letter to the editor

The Writers Post welcomes letters to the editor, especially letters which are in response to a critique published in The Writers Post. Letters must include the sender’s address and telephone number for verification, and senders must identify themselves by real name. Anonymous letters will not be read. If you send your letter via e-mail, it must be pasted into the body of the e-mail. Don’t send attachments. If you prefer to send your letter via conventional mail, please find The Writers Post’s conventional mail address in The Writers Post Home Page. The editor forfeits the right to correct typing errors or known factual errors, and your letter will be printed as-is. The writers published in The Writers Post express their readiness to discuss any issues they wrote, and The Writers Post would like to print any response, especially to criticism, for other point of view. However, a letter that is considered potentially libelous, or a response that includes the response of a third person will not be published (Here we have a simple reason, an indirect response is considered personal issue, and a bad-behaved response, if intended to be hidden inside the other person’s feedback is considered of low quality and anonymous). Although The Writers Post doesn’t guarantee their publication, all letters are welcomed. ----            

 

Literature in translation

CA DAO,

VIETNAMESE FOLK POETRY,

and the young American writer MARTHA LACKRITZ

 

MOST ‘CA DAO’, PRODUCT OF THE FOLK BUT REALLY VIETNAMESE LITERATURE, ARE LOVE POEMS.

 

MARTHA LACKRITZ, American co-editor of Heritage Magazine (VN), born in 1980 in Texas and educated at Brown University, from where she received her BA in Comparative Literature in 2003. She was then awarded a Fulbright grant to research and translate Vietnamese folk poetry, ca dao, for one year, after which she remained in Vietnam to write and translate. 10 translated ca dao poems published in this issue are taken from Martha Lackritz’s ca dao collection-in-progress (see literature-in-translation below).

     English literature

     SHORT STORY & POETRY

       Ocean and exile  memoir by Uyen Nicole Duong (click title)

     From Gulag to Love, a lover’s ballad to him

       whose name is prisoner-of-conscience  poem by Uyen Nicole Duong (click title)

Uyen Nicole Duong, pseudonym of Duong Nhu Nguyen, was born in Hoi An Quang Nam, brought up in Hue and Saigon (former capital of South Vietnam). Uyen Nicole Duong received her B.S. in Journalism / Communication from Southern Illinois University, J.D. from University of Houston (Texas), and LLM from Harvard Law School (Cambridge MA). She is believed to be the first Vietnamese Municipal Judge in the United States (Serving in Texas: Associate Municipal Judge, City of Houston, and Magistrate for State of Texas; honoured by the American Bar Association at “Minority Women in the Judiciary” conference – NYC, 1992). Practicing law but she sees herself primarily as a writer, and writes in two languages: Vietnamese and English. Her pieces in Vietnamese appeared in numerous literary magazines, her English's in Tap chi Song-Van and Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal. Uyen Nicole Duong's first book 'Mui huong que', a collection of short stories published by Van Nghe Publisher in 1999 was followed by ‘Daughters of the River Huong’ published by RavensYards (2005). Another collection of stories, ‘Chin Chu Cua Nang’ will be published by Van Moi Publisher in the summer of 2005. Her short story The young woman who practiced singing originally published in Song-Van Magazine under pseudonym NhuNguyen Nicole (January-April issue, 1988) won two awards, one of which was the Stuart Miller Writing Award organised by District of Columbia Bar Association, 1988. Her short story The Ghost of Ha Tay published in Volume 4-Number 2-July 2002 was a finalist selection for the Columbine Award of the Moondance Film Festival 2001. Uyen Nicole Duong also writes articles, critiques. Her article "Gender Issues in Vietnam – The Vietnamese Woman: Warrior and Poet" appeared in the Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, University of Washington, College of Law, March 2001. 

˙ RETURN TO CONTRIBUTORS ˙    Uyen Nicole Duong’s Bio

 

     Colibri   a poem by Aidan Andrew Dun (Click title for the poem)

Aidan Andrew Dun, British poet, born in London, raised for ten (in)formative years in the West Indies. He lives now on Parliament Hill in North London. His two epic poems were published in the United Kingdom by Goldmark (Vale Royal, 1995, Universal, 2002). The first earned praise from Derek Walcott, who said 'Vale Royal moves with the ease and the clarity of a fresh spring over ancient stones, making its myths casual, even colloquial-- an impressive achievement.' The subject of Vale Royal, (composed in terza rima,) is the psychogeography of ancient Kings Cross in central London. Twenty three years all-making, Vale Royal earned Aidan Andrew Dun the title Poet of Kings Cross. Universal, in twelve cantos, has been widely reviewed. Aidan Andrew Dun’s third epic is now in first draft, a fourth in preparation. His shorter poems have appeared in many British and some European journals. The London Magazine has published, as well as many shorter pieces, two medium length poems, one of which, Three Kings Passage, ran to twenty seven pages. His work is now beginning to appear via selected internet literary journals, among them The Aurora Journal, Projected Letters, Contrary, Avatar, Interpoetry, The Wissahickon, and The Dogwood Journal. Colibri  is Aidan Andrew Dun’s first appearance in The Writers Post.

˙ RETURN TO CONTRIBUTORS ˙   Aidan Andrew Dun ’s Bio

 

    A moment in Hanoi  by Que Son (click title)

Que Son, pseudonym of Ho Ngoc Son, born Nov 25, 1960 in Da Nang Viet Nam. His first published work, “One Spring morning”, appeared in the January 2005 issue of The writers Post. “A moment in Hanoi” is a memoir of his recent visit to Vietnam. Que Son lives in Brooklyn, New York.

˙ RETURN TO CONTRIBUTORS ˙   A moment in Hanoi   Que Son’s Bio

 

     Solitude by Vu Thi An