(Der Vang, Mai) Mai Der Vang is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle. Her poetry has appeared in The New Republic, Poetry, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, and her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The San Francisco Chronicle. Afterland (Graywolf Press), nominated for the National Book Award in Poetry, is a powerful, essential collection of poetry that recounts with devastating detail the Hmong exodus from Laos and the fate of thousands of refugees seeking asylum. With poems of extraordinary force and grace, Afterland holds an original place in American poetry and lands with a sense of humanity saved, of outrage, of a deep tradition broken by war and ocean but still intact, remembered, and lived.
