Description

One goal of the Asia Program’s AAPI portfolio grantmaking is to help AAPIs share their stories to increase awareness and shift public narratives.  The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) celebrates and fosters diasporic Vietnamese literary voices by promoting nonfiction, fiction, and poetry to empower Vietnamese artists in the diaspora to inspire understanding and dialogue within Vietnamese/Vietnamese American community, and with others.  DVAN believes that group residencies create such space for collective dialogues, creative collaboration, new writing, community healing, enhanced belonging and narrative change.   With HLF funding, DVAN will launch three all-inclusive residencies, taking places in Vézelay, France (summer 2023), Austerlitz, New York (December 2023), and Dalat, Vietnam (winter 2024-25).  Each residency will consist of 7-10 emerging and established literary artists worldwide.  While each residency will have a unique personality and focus, they all respond to the 50 th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon to reflect the change and resilience from the Vietnamese diaspora throughout Vietnam, Asia and the globe.   As discussed internally, this grant, if approved, will come out of C&I funds and be administered by the Asia Program. The grant would advance Asia’s Goals 1(b) (support continued development of SEA studies) and 3(b) (disseminate Asian and AAPI stories widely and reach new audiences).