I make and teach creative work rooted in attention. Whether I'm writing, photographing, or leading a workshop, I'm interested in the ways careful observation helps us remember, connect, and imagine differently.

Black and white photograph of a creative workspace. There is a wall above a desk covered with art prints, notes, postcards, and drawings. A stack of paper and stationery items are on the desk with a lit candle adding light.

Writing

I write narratives and poems that center questions of belonging and memory. I'm curious about the power of narrative and identity. With my Vietnamese, French, and Anglo-American cultural inheritance, I live and write with the complexities and gifts of multiculturalism. When I sit down to write, I’m following a sensation I want to capture in words or a curiosity I don’t yet know how to speak aloud. My stories ask: what does it mean to acknowledge inherited histories and to live and love well?

Teaching, for me, begins with curiosity. Whenever I lead a university seminar, facilitate a community workshop, or work one-on-one with writers, I strive to create spaces where people feel invited to take creative risks, ask deeper questions, and discover what they already know but haven't yet found language for. I teach writing as both a craft and a way of paying attention, one that asks us to listen closely to ourselves and to the world around us.

Teaching

Photography

Photography taught me to pay attention. My first black-and-white film photography class introduced me to the work of Sally Mann, Lorna Simpson, Diane Arbus, and Carrie Mae Weems, and to the quiet magic of watching an image emerge in the red light of the darkroom. Black-and-white photographs hold a sense of timelessness that fascinates me. I'm looking for the moment when light and form collide just so. I photograph faces and fragments, trees and textures, seascapes and skyscapes, flesh and stone.