Biography

NGUYEN DO was born in Ha Tinh province of Vietnam in 1959. He lived and worked in Ho Chi Minh City as an editor and reporter before moving to the States in 1999. His eleven books of poetry in Vietnamese include The Fish Wharf and The Autumn Evening (in collaboration with Thanh Thao, 1988), The Empty Space (Association Writers of Vietnam, 1991) and New Darkness (Association Writers of Vietnam, 2009). With Paul Hoover, he edited and translated Black Dog, Black Night: Anthology of Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (Milkweed Edition, 2008), 12+3: Selected Poetry of Thanh Thao (Association Writers of Vietnam, 2008), and Returning to Con Son: Selected Poetry of Nguyen Trai (Saigon Culture, 2009). Another translation, Beyond the Court Gate: Selected Poetry of Nguyen Trai is forthcoming from Counterpath Press. With Hoang Hung, he also edited and translated Selected Poetry of Allen Ginsberg (Association Writers of Vietnam, 2009). Currently, he lives near San Francisco.

PAUL HOOVER is the author of twelve books of poetry including Sonnet 56 (Les Figues Press, 2009), Edge and Fold (Apogee Press, 2006), and Poems in Spanish (Omnidawn, 2005), which was nominated for the Bay Area Book Award. With Maxine Chernoff, he edited and translated Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin (Omnidawn Publishers, 2008). With Nguyen Do, he edited and translated the anthology, Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (Milkweed Editions, 2008) and Beyond the Court Gate: Poems of Nguyen Trai Trai (Counterpath Press, forthcoming in 2010). Also the editor of the journal New American Writing (with Maxine Chernoff) and Postmodern American Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1994), he published a collection of literary essays, Fables of Representation (University of Michigan Press, 2004) and a novel, Saigon, Illinois (Vintage Contemporaries, 1988). He is a founding board member of The Poetry Center at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a professor at San Francisco State University.