Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay

Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a Lao American writer. She was born in a refugee camp in Nongkhai, Thailand and immigrated to Minnesota in 1984. Because of her unique background, her work is focused on creating tools and spaces for the amplification of refugee voices through poetry, theater, and experimental cultural production. Her plays have been presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Theater Mu, Consortium of Asian American Theater Artists, and Theater Unbound. She is a Playwright's Center (2018) and Theater Mu (2011-12) fellow in playwriting, a Loft Literary Center fellow in poetry (2018) and in children's/young adult literature (2019), a Twin Cities Media Alliance fellow in public art (2018), and an Aspen Ideas Bush Foundation scholar. Her poetry, essays, plays, and short stories can be found in the Asian American Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, Rubin Museum's Spiral Magazine, Journal for Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, and Saint Paul Almanac.

She's received creative grants from the Jerome Foundation, Bush Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Forecast Public Art, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the MN State Arts Board, among others. Her first picture book, When Everything Was Everything, is a love note to the Lao diaspora and displaced peoples.

Find her at @REFUGENIUS