Mai Der Vang

Mai Der Vang is a Hmong American poet.

Vang was born in Fresno, California. Vang's parents resettled in the United States in 1981 as Hmong refugees fleeing Laos.

She graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a degree in English, and from Columbia University with an MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry.

Her book, Afterland, won the 2016 Walt Whitman Award selected by Carolyn Forche. Afterland was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry in 2017, as well as a finalist for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award.

Vang is a "finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry."

Forest of Beginnings

Take to the Days a Fist of Starlight

Proximal

In the Year of Permutations

That All, Everyone, Each in Being

Out of Research Into Reveries

Refugee, Walking Is the Most Human of All

Year of the Tornado

Grove of Stones

Subterfuge

Sojourn with Snow

Calling the Lost

I Shovel Into the Heart to Find Its Naked Face

Ear to the Night

Heart Swathing in Late Summer

Dear Exile

I Am the Whole Defense

I the Body of Laos and All My UXOs

Matriarch

Terminus

Phantom Talker

In the Swallow’s Breath It Is You

At Birth I Was Given a Book

Three

Meditation of the Lioness

Light From a Burning Citadel

When the Mountains Rose Beneath Us, We Became the Valley

Diadem on Lined Paper

Until Nowhere

Mother of People without Script

Monument

Look to the New Moon

I Understand This Light to Be My Home

For the Nefarious

After All Have Gone