Zora Mai Quỳnh is an award-winning Vietnamese American dancer, performance artist, writer, filmmaker, mental health advocate, and social justice strategist. Zora is the winner of the 2021 San Francisco Foundation Nomadic Press Literary Award. You can find Zora sipping boba at zmquynh.com or at @zmquynh on twitter, facebook, and instagram.
Upcoming Events
Documentary Films
Intersections- Pilot Episode for Season 1- “Meet the Đà Nẵng Gang”
Intersections is an award winning documentary style series that explores the lives of the “Children of the Dust”; a Vietnamese term to refer to the mixed-race children born in Vietnam during the war. In many cases, they were orphaned and adopted into families around the world and now their journeys are intersecting with the unexpected gift of touching lives across multiple generations as a they turn the tide on the stigmas attached to the Vietnam War. The series also shares the stories of the men, women, and military service members that helped shape their lives. These are their stories… in their own words.
Special Super Secret Project
To be announced in April 2025
Essays
01
Meta Eulogy: Nguyễn Ngọc Loan By a Vietnamese American Part 1 Part 2
A creative fiction meditation on cultural memory, media, and the mythology of the Vietnam War.
02
Master Cultural Translator: Octavia Butler
The effect of reading Octavia Butler on a burgeoning Vietnamese writer.
03
Quốc Ngữ: The Shackle that Became the Sword
When the introduction of language to facilitate colonization becomes a tool of revolution…
04
Truyện Kiều: The Heirloom of Dissidence
Vietnam’s national treasure Poet, Nguyễn Du, celebrated for his revolutionary tactics in a country that imprisons dissidence.
05
The Freedom to Write: Vietnamese Dissident Writers
The freedom of expression enjoyed by many Vietnamese in the diaspora is a fundamental right that was hard-won by writers who sacrificed their lives in Vietnam so that we can manifest the words that we imagine.
06
On the Topic of Erasure, People of Color Destroy Science Fiction
I write about my people so that I won’t get erased. Not by the “they,” but by myself—by the “we,” “me,” “I,” “us.” The “exiled.” The “diaspora.” The ones that fled, died, killed, and sacrificed for “Tự Do.” For freedom.
Podcasts
The South China Sea
They are in the fragmentation of raindrops during monsoon season and the quivering of evaporating dew in the dawn of sea salt mornings.
The Chamber of Souls
Today it is announced that our quarantine is over and our refugee camp sufficiently detoxified to enter the Waterlands of Lạc, the home of our rescuers.
Tell the Phoenix Fox, Tell the Tortoise Fruit by Cynthia So
On the day Sunae turned nine years old, there was no joyful feast. A monster burst from the sea that night and ate five people.
When She Sings…
when she speaks there are phrases missing
words strung up in incoherent pieces
memories juggling between myth and history
