Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees

Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees--a reading and discussion moderated by: Laren McClung and featuring thi diem thúy lê and Gardner McFall.

thi diem thúy lê was cited by The New York Times as one of its “Writers on the Verge” shortly before her novel, The Gangster We Are All Looking For, was published by Knopf (2003), to glowing reviews. Her work has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, Harper’s Magazine, and the anthology The Very Inside, and among her awards are Fellowships from the Radcliffe and Guggenheim foundations. Her solo performance work includes Red Fiery Summer and The Bodies Between Us, which have been performed throughout the United States at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Vineyard Theater, as well as in Europe.

At fourteen, Gardner McFall lost her Navy pilot father in the Vietnam War. His A-4 Skyhawk was never recovered from the Pacific where he was training for a second tour of duty in Vietnam. Her work has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Southwest Review, The Sewanee Review, The New Yorker, The Nation, Poet Lore, and The Hopkins Review, among other journals. Her chapbook On the Line was recently published by Finishing Line Press.

Laren McClung is the author of Between Here and Monkey Mountain (Sheep Meadow Press, 2012) and coeditor of Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees (W.W. Norton, 2017).