RENAISSANCE WOMAN: LITERARY READING AT OLYMPIA TIMBERLAND PUBLIC LIBRARY, WASHINGTON STATE

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Author Uyen Nicole Duong at Olympia Timberland public library, Washington State

TEXT OF RELEASE:
June 3, 2011
Meet Uyen Nicole Duong, extraordinary author of “Daughters of the River Huong”
Polymath: A person of great or wide-ranging knowledge or learning; a Renaissance woman…
Just a few weeks after she’d won a national Vietnamese literary award, 16-year old Uyen Nicole Duong arrived in the United States, a political refugee from a country torn apart by war. She attended university, became a journalist, public education administrator, attorney, law professor, the first Vietnamese American appointed as a judge in the United States, and a self-taught painter whose work
focuses on l'Art Brut, or “raw art” that has not been “cooked” in the world of art schools, galleries, museums. And now she has published her first novel, Daughters of the River Huong, with two more titles in the wings.
Duong will be at the Olympia Timberland Library on Friday, June 10 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Copies of her book will be for sale and a sample of her artworks will be displayed. A drawing will be held for one of the pieces. The library will hand out free prize drawing tickets to those present.
"Daughters of the River Huong" spans 100 years and four generations of Vietnamese women, from the royal palaces of the Violet City of Hue to the teeming streets of wartime Saigon, from the affluence of Paris' St. Germain-des-Pres to Manhattan. The tale captures the richly complex history of Vietnam and its people.
Duong will begin her presentation by reading a short excerpt from one of the novels. She will give a firsthand account of the fall of Saigon and share how her past experiences influence her writing and
painting. Duong escaped the city on a cargo plane in 1975, leaving behind many of her loved ones as well as copies of her first novella, fresh off the press and awaiting distribution by her beloved grandfather.
Duong will also touch on how her profession as a lawyer has influenced her writing, her research on human trafficking in Southeast Asia and the measures she has proposed to combat this global problem. A question-and-answer period will precede a book-signing session.
More detail about the author: Before escaping Saigon, Uyen Nicole Duong at 16 had won the Republic of Vietnam’s National Honor Prize for Literature. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Communication and Journalism from Southern Illinois University, a law degree from the University of Houston, and the advanced LLM degree from Harvard. She also trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena. Besides her law profession, she has been a journalist and a public education administrator. She is a self-taught painter and has recently been selected as a Fulbright scholar. She lives in Houston.
The Olympia library is at 313 8th Ave. For more information, call (360) 352-0595 or go to www.TRL.org.