Join us for a live watch party and reading celebrating the UK publication of Dear Diaspora by Susan Nguyen, with a combination of live and online poetry readings. On the night we will hear poems from Susan Nguyen’s collection exploring intergenerational grief and the diaspora experience, as well as poems from Palestine translated into both English and Vietnamese. The night will be both a celebration of the Vietnamese diaspora and a fundraiser to support families living in Palestine.
Dear Diaspora is an unapologetic reckoning with history, memory, and grief. Parting the weeds on a small American town, this collection sheds light on the intersections of girlhood and diaspora. In its deliberate interweaving of voices, Dear Diaspora explores Susan Nguyen’s journey while bringing to light other incarnations of the refugee experience.
The first half of the evening will feature poetry readings by Joshua Nguyen and Cathy Linh Che, followed by Susan Nguyen reading from Dear Diaspora . Guests who select an 'in person + book' ticket will receive a complimentary copy of Dear Diaspora at the event. All ticket costs go to the fundraiser.
The second half of the night will see poems by Mahmoud Darwish and Najwan Darwish read in Arabic, English and Vietnamese in solidarity with people living in Palestine, highlighting translation as both a practice of literary exchange and an act of solidarity. The event foregrounds how poetry can harness individual voices to tell wider stories about our shared world.
All funds from tickets to both this live event and the online readings will go directly to support families living in Palestine. If you are attending online, we will send you the Zoom link a day before the event.
Readers
Susan Nguyen's poetry is often interested in the body: how geography, history, and trauma leave markers, both visible and invisible. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize and have appeared or are forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, Tin House, Diagram, and elsewhere.
Hoài-Phương (Thơ Palestine) is a painter specializing in Oriental art. Currently based in Italy, she is an organizer advocating for a free Palestine. Phương sponsors the family of Mohammed Al-Shaer, consisting of three orphaned siblings in Gaza. Together with Mohammed, she co-founded the “Water for Mawasi” fund, which provides potable water to displaced Palestinians on a weekly basis and supports other community initiatives. In one year, the fund has delivered 300,000 liters of water to Mawasi. Phương also runs the blog “Thơ Palestine”, where she translates works of Palestinian poets and writers, as well as news from Palestine, aiming to shift the narrative within the Vietnamese community.
Cathy Linh Che is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025), Split (Alice James Books) and co-author of the children’s book An Asian American A to Z: a Children’s Guide to Our History (Haymarket Books). Her video installation Appocalips is an Open Call commission with The Shed NY, and her film We Were the Scenery won the Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction at the Sundance Film Festival. She teaches as Core Faculty in Poetry at the low residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Antioch University in Los Angeles and works as Executive Director at Kundiman. She lives in New York City.
Joshua Nguyen is the author of Come Clean (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021), winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, the Writers' League of Texas Discovery Award, and the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Poetry Award. He is also the author of the chapbooks, American Lục Bát for My Mother (Bull City Press, 2021) and Hidden Labor & The Naked Body (Sundress Publications, 2023). He is a Vietnamese American writer, a collegiate national poetry slam champion (CUPSI), and enjoys the practice of dish drying. He has received fellowships from Kundiman, Kenyon Review, Tin House, Sundress Academy For The Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. He is a humor editor for The Offing Mag. He received his MFA/PhD from The University of Mississippi and currently teaches at Tufts University.
Nariman Youssef is a translator of Arabic literature, and Director of The Poetry Translation Centre.
Atef Alshaer is a Reader in Arabic Studies at the University of Westminster. He is also a poet and translator who grew up in the Gaza Strip. His published books include Love and Poetry in the Middle East: Love and Literature from Antiquity to the Present, Poetry and Politics in the Modern Arab World, A Map of Absence: An Anthology of Palestinian Writing on the Nakba, and Out of Gaza: A New Palestinian Poetry, which won the Palestine Book Award for 2024.
Organisers
Phương Anh works with words, primarily in translation, with features on Asymptote, Modern Poetry in Translation, PR&TA and in Here Was Once The Sea: An Anthology of Southeast Asian Eco-Writing among others. In 2024, they participated in NCW Visible Communities virtual residency, exploring the space between memory, archive and translation. Phương Anh works part-time with Tilted Axis Press and volunteers with An Việt Archives.
Established in 2018, the87press CIC is an Asian, LGBTQIA+, and neurodiverse led publishing collective and events curator in South London. They prioritize modernism, anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and environmentalism in our print publications of poetry, fiction, and essays. Additionally, they offer educational and creative workshops, industry leading live events, and regular commissioned work with online journal of culture theHythe.
The Poetry Translation Centre is the only UK organisation dedicated to translating and promoting contemporary poetry from Africa, Asia and Latin America. They publish books, organise events and deliver hands-on translation workshops that are open and inclusive to all. They also offer online resources including a dual-language poetry podcast and an extensive web archive of poems in translation.
The Common Press CIC is a not-for-profit queer independent bookshop café. As London's first consciously queer intersectional bookshop and events space, we provide a sanctuary for our LGBTQIA+ community to exist both during the day and at night in social settings.
Families we're fundraising for
Maram (45) is a single mother of three. She was a great baker who makes delicious sweets and bread for a living in North Gaza. She has been displaced 4 times and survived multiple bombings in Deir al-Balah. Recently she was able to move back to North Gaza, however due to evacuation orders she now needs $500 to move again. She is being directly supported by Phương Anh
Mohammed Al-Shaer (22) is a nursing student from Rafah, Gaza. He survived two bombings that killed his parents and two older brothers. Now the family’s breadwinner, he cares for his two younger sisters. Currently displaced in Mawasi, Mohammed co-founded the Water for Mawasi fund with Hoai-Phuong and is responsible for delivering water on the ground as well as other charitable initiatives.
Ibrahim Qawash (25) is a volunteer doctor who once ran the Gaza Wound Care Clinic with fellow physicians, until it dissolved after their displacement. He now works without salary as a volunteer doctor in the operating room at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Al-Nuseirat camp, where he witnesses the worst of Israel’s crimes.