Mad Girl Diaries | Lit Crawl SF 2025

The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network is proud to partner with Lit Crawl SF 2025 to present: Mad Girl Diaries, featuring the CôEm Collective!

Unlock secrets, stories, and memories as five Vietnamese American women writers “rage on the page” about the Vietnam War and the formation of the diaspora that brought them here. Get vulnerable with us as we strip down our narratives—cracking open the tension between past and present, belonging, identity, and homeland.

This event is FREE, but space is limited. Please RSVP to ensure your seat.

If you'd like to request special accommodations, please email us at [email protected].

ABOUT THE CÔEM COLLECTIVE

CôEm is a poem to our motherland. We are a sisterhood of intergenerational diasporic Vietnamese American women writers. Vietnamese women’s voices are often silenced, overlooked, erased or appropriated. We create space where we can hear one another, forge community through collaboration, write and present our art on our own terms. CôEm Collective is an initiative of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN).

Isabelle Thuy Pelaud is a professor at SF State University, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN). She is the author of This Is All I Choose To Tell: History and Hybridity in Vietnamese American Literature and co-editor of The Cleaving: Vietnamese Writers in the Diaspora.

BeBe Khuê Jacobs is a multidisciplinary artist, architect, photographer, art educator and community builder. Her deep passion for writing stems from childhood eavesdropping on her grandmother’s poetry gatherings. BeBe is currently working on a memoir about her childhood in Vietnam and a poetry collection translating her grandmother’s poems and reimagining them into paintings.

Jeanie Ngo is a San Francisco playwright whose works have been produced at SFSU, Bindlestiff Studio, Exit Theatre, PianoFight, Stage Werx, B8 Theatre, and Potrero Stage. Her short stories have been published in Transfer 109 and Quiet Lightning and her poetry has been featured at the Abrams Claghorn Gallery.

Kathy L. Nguyễn is an SF-based writer and Co-Executive Director of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN). Her short stories, essays, and articles have appeared in Fourteen Hills, Fringe, Women’s World, and elsewhere. She is co-editor of Troubling Borders: Art & Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora. Kathy has received grants and fellowships from the San Francisco Arts Commission, Vashon Artists Residency, Tin House, and the Community of Writers.

Vina Vo is a storyteller, facilitator, and organizer who bridges the cultural and geographic divide caused by displacement and diaspora. Her professional and community work revolve around creating and nurturing communities of belonging through storytelling, interactive learning experiences, and activating spaces for joy and play.

MORE ABOUT THE HOSTS AND SPONSORS

Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) - Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn

Lit Crawl San Francisco | Litquake Literary Festival

Et al. Books | Instagram

San Francisco Arts Commission - Instagram

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