The Termite Queen

Ta Duy Anh (1959- ) is unarguably a famous contemporary realist author in Vietnam. He graduated with highest distinction from the Nguyen Du School of Creative Writing. Ta is a member of the Vietnam Writers’ Association and served as editor for the Vietnam Writers’ Association Publishing House until he retired in 2020. Ta, a prolific writer, has published across numerous literary genres and won numerous awards for his literary works in Vietnam. His novel Lão khổ (The Miserable Mr. Khổ) has been translated into French and published in France under the title Sur le dos du buffle (La Frémillerie, 2017) while some of his short stories have been translated into English, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai. Despite his well-established career as a writer and an editor, some of his works were and have been censored due to political reasons in communist Vietnam. His novel Đi tìm nhân vật (Looking for a Character) was banned in 2002 as the government condemned it for ‘portraying a dark, negative picture of society’. Only fifteen years later was the book reassessed and approved for dissemination. Many of his short stories have also been censored. His novel Sinh ra để chết (Born to Die) is permanently banned in Vietnam but was released in the US in 2018. His newest novel, Đất mồ côi (The Orphaned Land, 2020), is being translated into English and will be published in Europe.

Quan Manh Ha is professor of American Literature & Ethnic Studies at the University of Montana. His research interests include multiethnic US literatures, Vietnam War literature, critical race theory, and literary translation. He is the translator of Other Moons: Vietnamese Stories of the American War and Its Aftermath (Columbia University Press, 2020), Luminous Nights: Pioneering Vietnamese Short Stories (La Frémillerie, France, 2021), and Hanoi at Midnight: Stories by Bao Ninh (Texas Tech University Press, 2022). He believes that literary translation is a political and an ethical act, and thus besides publishing several scholarly articles and essays in journals, he is committed to translating Vietnamese literature to promote cross-cultural understanding and global discourse on colonialism, imperialism, and the Vietnam War from all sides of the conflict. His short-story translations have appeared in various journals, such as Metamorphoses, Southern Humanities Review, Asian Literature and Translation, CIRQUE: A Literary Journal for Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, and DELOS.

Charles Waugh is the co-editor and co-translator of two collections of short fiction by Vietnamese writers: Wild Mustard: New Voices from Vietnam (Curbstone 2017), and Family of Fallen Leaves: Stories of Agent Orange from Vietnamese Writers (Georgia 2010). He is the associate editor for fiction at ISLE, the journal of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, and professor of English at Utah State University, USA.