ÁCCENTED | Letters & Lullabies: Diasporic Filipina Poets
Join DVAN for our 54rd episode of ÁCCENTED, featuring Barbara Jane Reyes and Karen Llagas in conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen!
EVENT DETAILS
Thursday, March 19, 2026 • 6:00 PM PT / 9:00 PM ET
This event is FREE. Please register in advance to receive a link to join the virtual conversation.
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of Letters to a Young Brown Girl, Invocation to Daughters, and others. Daughtersong Diaspore is forthcoming.
Karen Llagas’s new poetry collection, All of Us Are Cleaved, is recently published by Nomadic Press in 2023. Her first collection of poetry, Archipelago Dust, was published by Meritage Press in 2010. Other recent projects include translations of Filipino children’s books into English: Dancing Hands: A Story of Friendship in Filipino Sign Language (Chronicle Books, 2023) & How Do You Eat Color (Eerdman’s Book for Young Readers, 2025). A recipient of a RHINO Founder’s Prize, Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize & a Hedgebrook residency, her poems, translations, and book reviews have also appeared in various journals and anthologies, including most recently, Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (Paloma Press, 2023). She teaches Filipino at UC Berkeley and divides her time between San Francisco and Los Angeles. You can find more about her at www.karenllagas.com.
ABOUT THE HOSTS
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and numerous other awards. His most recent publication is A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial. His other books are the sequel to The Sympathizer, The Committed; a short story collection, The Refugees; Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction); and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He has also published Chicken of the Sea, a children’s book written in collaboration with his son, Ellison. He is a University Professor at the University of Southern California. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, he is also the editor of The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, and the forthcoming children’s book Simone illustrated by Minnie Phan.
Philip Nguyen is the co-host for ÁCCENTED: Dialogues in Diaspora presented by the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN). He teaches Asian American Studies in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, San Jose State University, and is the Executive Director for the Vietnamese American Roundtable, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in California’s South Bay Area. Philip has formerly served as the President of the Union of North American Vietnamese Student Associations (UNAVSA) and as the Co-Chair of the Young Vietnamese Americans (YVA) Committee for PIVOT – The Progressive Vietnamese American Organization.
ABOUT DVAN
The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) is dedicated to moving the voices and stories of the Vietnamese diaspora from the margins to the center. For over 20 years, DVAN has uplifted diasporic writers and artists through community events, writing residencies, and publishing opportunities, ensuring their perspectives reshape and expand the broader cultural narrative.
ABOUT ÁCCENTED
ÁCCENTED is DVAN’s acclaimed talk show and podcast, hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and community leader Philip Nguyen. Since launching in 2020, ÁCCENTED has become a global platform for dynamic, thought-provoking conversations that amplify the voices of writers, poets, visual artists, and other cultural producers of the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian diaspora.