The Bottom Drawer with Nguyẽ̂n Phan Quế Mai

Join the Bagri Foundation for our new series The Bottom Drawer. Featuring interviews with guest writers to discuss their early efforts and inspiration. On 21 August 2020, we speak with Vietnamese writer Nguyẽ̂n Phan Quế Mai, author of A New York Times Editor’s Choice book The Mountains Sing. The interview will be shared via Youtube, Facebook and Instagram from 3pm BST.

Biography

Born in North Việt Nam in 1973, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai grew up in the last years of the war and witnessed its devastation on her country. She moved to South Việt Nam at the age of six and worked as a street seller and rice farmer before winning a scholarship to attend university in Australia. She is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction published in Vietnamese, and her writing has been translated and published in more than 10 countries, most recently in Norton’s Inheriting the War anthology. Her work has received the Hanoi Writers Association ‘Poetry of the Year’ Award (2010).  She lives with her family in Jakarta.