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AWARD-WINNING CO-AUTHORS
PEN OPEN BOOKS AWARD WINNER
PEN USA NONFICTION BOOK AWARD FINALIST
Ten short stories written by Lily Hoàng and Vi Khi Nào explore a range of styles from love stories to speculative fiction and fairy tales.
In this inventive collaboration, Hoàng and Nào blend Vietnamese, English, and Vietlish, creating a fresh, dynamic voice that captures the complexity of the Vietnamese-American experience. Their stories dive into themes of generational trauma, identity, and cultural clash, offering everything from love stories pieced together from memory, to folklore and fantasy, to post-apocalyptic worlds where Vietnamese-American identities are reimagined.
Timber and Lụa is playful, moving, and full of surprises. The authors experiment with language and translation, showing how meaning can shift and change between cultures. Released on the fiftieth anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, this collection is both a celebration of diasporic voices and a tribute to the power of storytelling across generations.
"Award-winning interdisciplinary writers Hoàng and Nào provocatively interrogate language, comprehension, and communication in a global world. Their collaborative result is a polyglot showcase that combines English, Vietnamese, and a hybrid Vietlish to present 10 “experimental narratives”—a non-love story, disorienting conversations, dystopic genocide—that prove intriguingly experiential. Each is presented in three formats, intertwined English and Vietnamese (Vietlish) with a glossary, which is then repeated (almost) only in English on the left page and (almost) only in Vietnamese on the right...Overlaying the three versions together should ultimately reveal each story in full—but mindful participation and commitment will be required." —Terry Hong, Booklist
Lily Hoàng is the author of nine books, including Underneath (winner of the Red Hen Press Fiction Award), A Bestiary (PEN/USA Nonfiction Award finalist), and Changing (recipient of a PEN/Open Books Award). She is a professor of literature at UC San Diego, where she teaches in their MFA in Literary Arts. She lives in San Diego, California.
Vi Khi Nào is the author of many books and is known for her work spanning poetry, fiction, theatre, film, and interdisciplinary collaborations, most recently The Italy Letters (Melville House) and The Six Tones of Water, coauthored with Sun Yung Shin (Ricochet). Recognized as a former Black Mountain Institute fellow, Vi Khi Nào received the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize in 2022. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa. https://www.vikhinao.com