The Sorrow of War: When Heaven and Earth Raised the Dust Storm / Women (and Children) are Destined to Suffer

Talk and Poetry Reading

Van Cam Hai, Journalist, Poet, Prose writer from Vietnam

Van Cam Hai (Vietnam) , birth name Nguyen Thanh Hai (journalist, poet, documentary director, and fiction and nonfiction writer), was born on January 20, 1972 in Ham Ninh Village, Quang Binh Province, Central Vietnam. Van Cam Hai received a B.A. in Philology and Literature (Hue University, 1992) and a law degree also from the same University (2000).

He made his Vietnamese publishing debut in 1995 with a collection of poems titled (in English) Man Who Tends the Waves. His work has appeared in several American publications, including Tinfish and The Literary Review, Vietnam Inside-Out: Dialogues (2001), and the anthology Three Vietnamese Poets (2001). A member of the Vietnamese Association of Writers and of the Vietnamese Association of Journalists, Van Cam Hai works for the Tuoi Tre Newspaper and the Viet Nam National Television Broadcasting, Hue City. He has thrice received the Gold Prize for his work on documentary films. He is the author of four books of poetry and four books of prose, most recently, The History of the Silk Road (2008), Allah Chrysopogon Rhythm in Pakistan (2008), Mississippi Wild Gospel (2008), and Tibet-Sunlight Flower Drop (2004). He has won many awards and prizes for his works as well as received the International Writing Program Fellowship (University of Iowa Writer Workshop), International Writer Workshop Fellowship, Hong Kong Baptist University, in addition to being a fellow at William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences, University of Massachusetts, Boston (summer, 2008) and a researcher at the Vietnam Center, Texas Tech University (fall 2008).

co-sponsored by the Poynter Fellowship Program at Yale and the Vietnamese Student Association.

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