Watermark

Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, 25th Anniversary Edition

BARBARA TRAN, MONIQUE TRUONG, LUU TRUONG KHOI, AND ISABELLE THUY PELAUD

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of its publication, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network is proud to release a newly updatedversion of Watermark, the seminalanthology of Vietnamese American literature. Contextualized by a new forewordfrom Isabelle Thuy Pelaud and seasoned with new voices, Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, 25th Anniversary Edition takes its place as a generational work of eclectic and essentialvoices. Edited by Barbara Tran, Monique Truong, and Luu Truong Khoi,this updated edition of Watermark continues to elevate Vietnamese American literature, whose renaissance it ushered in upon its first publication. Again, some of the most innovativecontemporary Vietnamese American writers, such as Linh Dinh, Andrew Lam, BichMinh Nguyen, and Dao Strom, explore thematic and stylistic territory previouslyoverlooked in other collections, which have traditionally focused on war. New voices such as Anvi Hoàng, Vinh Nguyen, and Vi Khi Nao are included in this newedition, raising the number of pieces from forty to fifty-two. Watermark lifts all constraints, leaving the works toreset the boundaries for themselves. And they do—using poetry, fiction, andexperimental forms to venture further into the fringes of the Vietnamese American psyche. A work equal measures foundational and pathbreaking, now availableagain and expanded for a new generation of readers—an essential collection not to be missed.

Barbara Tran's poems have appeared in Conjunctions, Ploughshares,and The Paris Review. Barbara is a co-writer of the short, extended-reality film Madame Pirate: Becoming a Legend, a 2022 selection of SXSW and the Cannes Film Festival's Marché du Film. Her poetry collection is forthcomingfrom Palimpsest Press. She lives in Toronto, Canada. Monique Truong is a novelist, essayist, and librettist. Her award-winning novels are The Sweetest Fruits (Viking Books, 2019), Bitter in the Mouth (RandomHouse, 2010), and the national bestseller The Book of Salt (HoughtonMifflin, 2003). She is based in Brooklyn, New York. Luu Truong Khoi is a writer, editor, test-prep tutor, and admissions consultant. His fiction has appeared in The Vietnam Forum, Van Hoc, and Best New American Voices. He's been in resdence at Yaddo and was educated at Harvard. He lives in New York City.

April 2023

288 pages

Poetry

Rights: World