Hoa Nguyen

Hoa Nguyen (born 1967 in Vĩnh Long) is an American poet.

Born near Saigon, Hoa Nguyen grew up in the Washington D.C. area and studied poetry at New College of California in San Francisco. She now lives in Toronto, Ontario.

With her husband Dale Smith, Nguyen edited ten issues of Skanky Possum Magazine, and under this imprint, published books and chapbooks by Kristin Prevallet, Tom Clark, Frank O'Hara, and others. Together they host a reading series presenting performances by Pierre Joris, Linh Dinh, Susan Briante, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Kate Greenstreet, Laynie Browne, Anselm Berrigan, and others. Since 1998, she has led a popular virtual and in-person writing workshop focusing on the works of poets such as Alice Notley, Eileen Myles, Joanne Kyger, Philip Whalen, Charles Olson, Emily Dickinson, and Gertrude Stein. She currently teaches poetics at Ryerson University in Toronto, Miami's low residency MFA program, and the Milton Avery School for Fine Arts at Bard College.

Her poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sound: The Teachers of WritersCorps in Poetry and Prose (City Lights, 2009), The Best of Fence (Fence Books, 2009), For the Time Being: A Bootstrap Anthology (Bootstrap Books, 2008), and in An Anthology of New (American) Poets, Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (Milkweed Editions, 2008) (Talisman House, 1998). She is the author of Dark (1998), Parrot Drum (Leroy, 2000), Your Ancient See Through (Sub Press, 2002) and Red Juice (Effing, 2005), Hecate Lochia (Hot Whiskey Press, 2009), as well as many online publications. Nguyen is frequently asked to give readings, act as poet in residence, and lecture on poetry for organizations across the country.

An example of her more notable work is MEAN SUDDENLY BITCH WOMAN, sampled here in an interview with poet Carol Mirakove, praised for its subtle attack on man's virtue in a soulless society.

Her most recent full-length collection, As Long As Trees Last, was published by Wave Books in September, 2012.