Tet-In-Seattle is proud to have Ms. Tran Mong Tu as one of its distinguished guests this year. Well-known and well-regarded as the unofficial poet laureate of Vietnamese language in the Seattle area, Ms. Tran Mong Tu will appear as one of the authors in our new series "Meet Some Vietnamese-American Authors."

Tran Mong Tu worked as a correspondent for the Associated Press in South Vietnam, beginning in the 1960’s when the United States became heavily involved in the Vietnam war. When South Vietnam fell in 1975, she fled with her family to the United States, becoming a refugee for the second time in her life. (The first time was in 1954, when she and her family fled North Vietnam when it fell under Communist control upon the partition of the country.)

Her new life in America also marked the beginning of her career as a poet and writer. She is a frequent contributor of poems and short stories to Vietnamese literary publication in America and overseas. From 2002 to 2005, she served as Editor-in-Chief for the Women and Family edition of the Vietnamese-language newspaper Nguoi Viet (The Vietnamese) based in Southern California. She has published a number of acclaimed collections of poetries and short stories: Poems by Tran Mong Tu (poetry-1990); Story of a Maple Leaf (short stories-1994); Let Me Make the Wind (poetry-1996), Miss Straw and Other Short Stories (Short Stories-1999) and The Belated Candle (poetry-2005).

Tran Mong Tu has written children's short stories for the Los Angeles Times since 2000. Some of her works have been translated into English. One of her poems, The Gift in Wartime, appeared in an American literature anthology for high school students (Glencoe Literature, The Reader’s Choice, Glencoe/McGraw-Hill 2000). In 2003, she won First Prize in the commentary category of The New California Media (NCM) Awards, informally known as "the Ethnic Pulitzers".

She lives in Bellevue, Washington