Award-winning Vietnamese-American poet Hieu Minh Nguyen will host an evening of Open Mic and Spoken Word at Carleton College’s performance space, The Cave, on Thursday, April 20 at 9 p.m. In addition to encouraging students to bring their own pieces to perform, Nguyen will contribute several of his own acclaimed poems.
Hieu Minh Nguyen is a queer Vietnamese-American poet. A child of immigrants, he grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota and is the youngest person to have become a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. His debut collection of poetry, This Way to the Sugar (Write Bloody Press, 2014), was also a finalist for the Lambda Book Award. His second collection of poetry, Not Here, will be released in 2018 by Coffee House Press.
“Hieu….should be required reading. He is patient with his ghosts, letting each sing its song of broken glass and burning houses and bathroom rugs as band aids for black mold. I can't imagine life without these poems. Thank you Hieu.”
—Bao Phi, author of Sông I Sing
Nguyen is a Kundiman fellow, a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, and recipient of a University of Arizona Poetry Center’s Summer Residency, a VERVE grant from Intermedia Arts, and the Minnesota Emerging Writers’ Grant from The Loft Literary Center. In addition to acting as a poetry editor for Muzzle magazine, his work has also appeared or is forthcoming in the Poetry Magazine, Button Poetry, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. He is based in Minneapolis.
This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Gender and Sexuality Center. For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-6830. The Cave is located in the lower level of Evans Hall on the Carleton campus.
