Võ Phiến
Võ Phiến (1925), real name Đoàn Thế Nhơn, is a fiction writer, scholar, translator, essayist and poet.
He was born in Bình Định, was arrested by the Communists in October of 1952, released in September of 1954, moved to Saigon, emigrated to the US as a refugee in 1975, and lives in Los Angeles, California.
Widely regarded a major literary figure, Võ Phiến contributed to almost all aspects of literary production in Vietnam before 1975 and afterwards as part of the Vietnamese diaspora. Until the fall of South Vietnam, he contributed to most major literary journals in Vietnam, such as Mùa Lúa Mới and Bách Khoa, and also founded the Thời Mới publishing house in 1962, which emphasized and cultivated the discovery of new talent among younger Vietnamese writers. In 1960 he was awarded Vietnam's National Literature Prize and from 1961, he went on to serve as one of the panel of judges for the National Literature Prize. As an advocate and teacher of literature, he served on the National Council on Culture and Education from 1970-1974, was a professor of literature at Hòa Hảo University in Long Xuyên and the Phương Nam University in Saigon from 1973-1975. After escaping Vietnam in 1975 with his wife and two children, Võ Phiến sought refuge in California. Continuing to write and publish in exile, he has become one of the most respected writers in the Vietnamese diaspora. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of the literary journal Văn Học Nghệ Thuật and contributed to Vietnamese-language newspapers and magazines published overseas in the United States. A prolific writer, he is the author of numerous novels, short story collections, books of essays and criticism, poetry, and translations. As a literary scholar and critic, he is justly celebrated for an encyclopedic, monumental series of books on the literature of South Vietnam.
English translations of his criticism, essays and stories remain scattered in publications such as: War and Exile: A Vietnamese Anthology, edited Nguyễn Ngọc Bích; Vietnamese Short Stories: An Introduction, edited and translated by James Banerian; The Other Side of Heaven: Post-War Fiction by Vietnamese and American Writers, edited by Wayne Karlin, Lê Minh Khuê and Trương Vũ; and Virtual Lotus: Modern Fiction from Southeast Asia, edited by Teri Shaffer Yamada. To date, Literature in South Vietnam 1954-1975, translated by Võ Đình Mai and published in 1992 by Vietnamese Language and Culture Publications, Melbourne, represents the only existing English translation of Võ Phiến's work of literary history.
Jack C. Schafer has written a book-length study on Võ Phiến entitled Vo Phien and The Sadness of Exile (2006), marking the first book-length study in English of any modern Vietnamese writer and the transnational impact of Võ Phiến's literary legacy. Nguyễn Hưng Quốc has also written a book on him.
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Nguồn: wikivietlit