Blue Nguyen *

About

Blue Nguyen is a Vietnamese non-binary lesbian poet, artist, and organizer. Inspired by cartography and traditional symbolism in Viet architecture and culture–they research the architecture of grief, giving thanks, and livelihood. They work with poetic syntax, oral history, Vietnamese traditional woodworking, textile, and fiber techniques using organic materials. Their artistic journey began with poetry as a translation on grief, an act of prayer. Now as they research using materials off the page, their work questions what can a poem be made of– prayer as poetics, poetics as prayer. Material as an altar. They have been a fellow at LAMBDA Literary, AIR.HUE, and more. They are an associate editor at Iron Horse Literary Review. Their work is featured in Palette Poetry, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Peach Mag, and more. Nominated for Best of the Net Anthology and Best New Poets Anthology, their debut book Hey Siri, What Time is it in Vietnam? is currently out now with GameOverBooks.In their free time they enjoy creating mixed media art using anything they can find in their apartment, weaving with yarn and fibers, learning how to woodwork, making sweet and slow breakfast in the morning with their girlfriend/người yêu, and singing bird songs to the moon. Blue's poems explore translation as an act of weaving time and grief, as prayer, as apology. Much of blue's work is an ode to their ancestors, their family (chosen and not chosen), their lesbian (t4t) love, and queer Viet grief and joy.Currently, they are working on a poetry manuscript and a novel.You can find them on Instagram: @blue.ngu and on Twitter: @queerqhost.

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Blue Nguyen's debut book is out now with GameOverBooks. You can order it here.ISBN: 9798991556699In Hey Siri, What Time is it in Vietnam?, Blue Nguyen explores how to extend love past its expiration date by building an altar, a dream log, a garden, and finally a letter. Nguyen experiments with form on and off the page, combining ancestral and modern grief within a digital space. From tweeting apologies to building Wikipedia pages, Nguyen experiments with what becomes possible within grief, finding form and shape in voicemails from a dead father, and dream logs that mix memories with possibility or impossibility.Click here for more info!

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Blue Nguyen *

About

Blue Nguyen is a Vietnamese non-binary lesbian poet, artist, and organizer. Inspired by cartography and traditional symbolism in Viet architecture and culture–they research the architecture of grief, giving thanks, and livelihood. They work with poetic syntax, oral history, Vietnamese traditional woodworking, textile, and fiber techniques using organic materials. Their artistic journey began with poetry as a translation on grief, an act of prayer. Now as they research using materials off the page, their work questions what can a poem be made of– prayer as poetics, poetics as prayer. Material as an altar. They have been a fellow at LAMBDA Literary, AIR.HUE, and more. Their work is featured in Palette Poetry, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Peach Mag, and more. Nominated for Best of the Net Anthology and Best New Poets Anthology, their 1st book Hey Siri, What Time is it in Vietnam? is forthcoming with GameOverBooks.In their free time they enjoy creating mixed media art using anything they can find in their apartment, weaving with yarn and fibers, learning how to woodwork, making sweet and slow breakfast in the morning with their girlfriend/người yêu, and singing bird songs to the moon. Blue's poems explore translation as an act of weaving time and grief, as prayer, as apology. Much of blue's work is an ode to their ancestors, their family (chosen and not chosen), their lesbian (t4t) love, and queer Viet grief and joy.you can find them on instagram: @blue.ngu and on twitter: @queerqhost.

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Fundraising for air hue residency *

I’m excited to share that I have the opportunity to attend Air Hue’s Artist Residency (@air.hue on Instagram) in Huế, Vietnam in March 2025. This is a dream come true for me. This residency will allow me to return to my homeland, Vietnam, to create art, poetry, and community with other queer Viet folks.During my time at Air Hue, I will be working on my multidisciplinary art project titled “Cám ơn,” which will combine poetry with various mediums, including weaving, fiber arts, woodworking, and more. This will help me experiment with my poetry further– something I dream of doing– alongside a community of other Queer Viet poets and artists.Thank you for considering supporting my journey! Your contributions and support means the world to me. Any donation whether it be $1 or $100 would be helpful in offsetting the financial burden and barriers to attending the residency! If you’re unable to donate at the moment, no worries. Please help share and spread my fundraiser!Donate on Venmo:
@bluengu(Last 4 digits of my phone number are 2586 in case Venmo asks)!

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Praise for Hey Siri, What Time is it in Vietnam? *

“to name something is an act of prayer,” says one poem in Blue Nguyen’s unforgettable debut collection. Other poems show us just how many actions can also be acts of prayer: translation, re-homing orchids, peeling oranges, listening to the rain, deconstructing Wikipedia, being queer, being a cowboy, grieving a father, reinventing Vietnamese, softening, tweeting (as bird, as digital confessional), queering erasure poetry, writing letters to the dead, asking the living if they, too, remember. I am so moved by this book, its many prayers and altars, wormholes and worms, its true efforts toward love. How lucky, to be on this earth with this poet who says, in every possible and impossible way, thank you and I miss you and “i would build you a garden.”— Chen Chen, author of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

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“Inventing itself through erasures, web pages, conversations, footnotes, and apologies, this book is at once visceral and clinical, both vulnerable and powerfully armored”
— Rob Macaisa Colgate, author of Hardly Creatures

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Blue Nguyen's debut book is out now with GameOverBooks. You can order it here.ISBN: 9798991556699In Hey Siri, What Time is it in Vietnam?, Blue Nguyen explores how to extend love past its expiration date by building an altar, a dream log, a garden, and finally a letter. Nguyen experiments with form on and off the page, combining ancestral and modern grief within a digital space. From tweeting apologies to building Wikipedia pages, Nguyen experiments with what becomes possible within grief, finding form and shape in voicemails from a dead father, and dream logs that mix memories with possibility or impossibility.

*Featured in WBUR's 2025 Summer Reading List
*Featured at Concord Festival of Authors
Debut Authors Panel 2025

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“Blue Nguyen's remarkable debut explores the (im)possibility of existing in the liminal spaces between languages, gender, and cultures. Written for anyone who has ever communed with ghosts, peeled an orange for a loved one, or secretly wondered 'Would you stll love me if I were a worm?'”
— Ally Ang, author of Let the Moon Wobble

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“Blue is an expert at holding the bittered wound left when our beloveds become light, & tendering this truth into softening.” — Marina Avery Robinson, Poet, Lambda & Tinhouse Fellow

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“Here grief takes many shapes: oranges, birds, voicemails, Wikipedia entries, apologies, confessions disguised as formal verse, and evocative fragments of memories and dreams”
— Steve Edwards, author of Breaking into the Backcountry

Publications *

(sidenote: anything that is underlined is a clickable links!)

Nominated for Best of the Net Anthology
Nominated for Best New Poets Anthology
Featured in WBUR's 2025 Summer Reading ListPoetry featured in:

Digital

Palette Poetry: * some field notes on nostalgia (disguised as a wikipedia page) * 2025
Ghost City Press: * May 2024 Issue * 2024
Peach Magazine: * Peach Magazine, * Video Performance * 2022
Protean Magazine: * Cut Yr Hair *2021
Prolit Magazine: * Issue 5 * 2021
DEAR Poetry Journal: * Blue Nguyen * 2021
The Mantle Poetry: * Issue 14, * Issue 11 * 2021, * 2020
Glass: A Journal of Poetry: * March 2020 Issue * 2020

Print

* Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam x Game Over Books – Loving
& Lasting Anthology ❋ 2024
* Vănguard Zine, Issue 6 ❋ 2024 (featured in the Library of Congress of the United States)
* Red Pocket Press – Year of the Fire Ox Zine ❋ 2021
* Disparities in Violence and Discrimination within the LGBTQ Community, LGBTQ Issues and Themes, The Falconer ❋ 2020
* & more

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Residency/Fellowship *

* 50 Arrow Gallery at Attack Bear Studios. Duo Artist in Residence + Art Exhibition. | June - Aug 2025, Eastworks, Easthampton, MA* Air Hue. Artist in Residence. | March 2025, Huế, Vietnam* LAMBDA Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. Lambda Fellow in Poetry. Selected by Chen Chen. | 2024, Remote* Fine Arts Work Center Scholarship for Boston Emerging Writers. FAWC Fellow in Poetry. Selected by Porsha Olayiwola and Oliver Baez. | 2023, Provincetown, MA.* Brew and Forge. Fellow in Poetry. Selected by Franny Choi and Tamiko Breyer. | 2022, New York

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Performances *

* The Dirty Gerund Poetry Show, Ralph’s Diner | Worcester, MA (Aug 2024)
* Boston Poetry Slam, Cantab Lounge | Cambridge, MA (July 2024)
* Asian American Resource Workshop Summer Celebration | Boston, MA
(Aug 2023)
* Kundiman (Northeast) Summer Reading | Somerville, MA (July 2023)
* Slam Free or Die | Manchester, NH (Jan 2023)
* Boston Poetry Marathon | Boston, MA (Aug 2022, Aug 2021)
* Port Veritas | Portland, ME (July 2021)
* Feminine Empowerment Slam Poetry Tournament | Cambridge, MA (Oct
2019)

Workshops + Panels *

*Concord Festival of Authors Debut Authors Panel 2025 (Upcoming October 25, 2025)
*City of Boston x Boston Public Library, Central Library in Copley Square — Another World is Already Poem-ing (June 21, 2025)
* Allied Media Conference — Centering AAPI Voices & Stories Around
Immigration (July 2, 2022)
* Asian American Resource Workshop — Poetry and Creative Writing Workshop
(Dec 2022)
* Community of Scholars Day — Lesley University (ART.FOR.CHANGE)
(2022)
* Guest Panelist, Worcester State University — Organize to Decolonize: How
Can We Decolonize Community Engagement (Sept 2022)

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Art *

What the River Sees (exhibit/Collection featured at 50 Arrow Gallery) (2025)

Recycled Linen, Fibers, Anthotypes, Turmeric, Photographic Film Paper, Found Wood, 15' x 9'

Below are my pieces featured in the What the River Sees collab-duo exhibit with my partner Dinh Truong showcased at the 50 Arrow Gallery.

In their collaborative exhibition What the River Sees, non-binary Vietnamese artists Blue Nguyen and Dinh Truong investigate ancestral history, bodies of water, and family. The work in What the River Sees calls upon the river, as an active witness, called into question for what it has seen and lay witness to. In this landscape, we seek to have the participant be an active witness to the river, as the river is an active witness to the participant. Through a queer-Viet lens Nguyen and Truong interrogate structures that lay claim over water and the human costs of industry and colonization. Drawing inspiration from their Vietnamese culture, ancestral customs and archive, architecture, cartography, oral history, traditional Viet woodworking technique, and poetic syntax, Nguyen and Truong piece together fractured history and landscape. They utilize the mediums of archival family photographs, digital photography capturing moments of landscape and architecture, anthotype, wood, fiber, paint, and cartography. Nguyen and Truong use these various practices as a vehicle for interrogation and reimagination. Within their praxis they are heavily influenced by personal family history and memory tied to rivers and bodies of water. Their work aims to question the implications of a river in hunger, in immigration, and in livelihood. Here the river is as much a story container as an active witness, documenting livelihood and destruction for both people and the landscape.

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CẢM ƠN (woodslab) * (2025)
(Featured in Air.Hue Exhibition and at 50 Arrow Gallery)

Found Wood, Traditional Vietnamese Woodcarving Tools, Apricot Oil, 20" x 25" x 2.75"

A wooden slab piece hand carved using traditional Vietnamese woodworking techniques and tools while in Huế, Vietnam. Side A: says Cam On, Side B: Showcases carvings of plants found in Vietnam. Side B of the wooden-slab is used as an altar-piece to hold incense.

What the River Sees Exhibition at 50 Arrow Gallery *

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Air.Hue Residency Final Critique Exhbition *

work documentation *

Fisherman's Loom * (2024)

Found wood-branch, Yarn, Wool, 8" x 8" x 7"

An individual project exploring the Vietnamese history between fishing and weaving, drawing inspiration from stories of my maternal family growing up in a small fishing village in southern Vietnam, and my father's (and his brothers') love for fishing. Fishing as livelihood, fishing as a love language. Featured in What the River Sees exhibit at the 50 Arrow Gallery.

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*<apology disguised as 140 character tweets: hybrid poems> *(2022/2024)

Collection of Video Stills 16:9

An individual project of poetics in remembering my late-father. A collection of video stills from a video I filmed, produced, and edited for my poem “apology disguised as 140 character tweets.” This video translates the poem into an immersive experience, engaging with the process of mourning. It features various scenes: the last fireworks shared with my father, my childhood home, my family’s altar, and more. Elements of film, music, and poetry are used to translate grief.(Later published in Peach Magazine).

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altar: a photo essay on grief * (2021)

Photography (Digital Photography) 4" x 6"

An individual project exploring grief. The photos were taken of my family’s ancestral altar while my late-father was in hospice- a week or so before he passed away.

rain * (2021)

Digital 1,620 x 2,160 px

An individual project exploring the queer love. Using open source images of a lesbian couple and a graph of rain fall to create a digital collage. An altar on rain.

altar * (2022/2024)

Recycled Tissue Box, Tin Cans, Candy Wrappers, Plastic Bags, Old T-shirt, Dried Flowers from Bouquet, Paper,
Hair Clip, Dad’s White Lighter, Masking Tape, Acrylic Paint, Branches, Yarn, Thread, Snow, 36" x 24" x 7"

An individual project exploring grief using recycled materials from my home that I lived with and gave new life
to, including objects that hold memory of my late-father, turned into an altar.

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*<Digital Diaries: plenty of fish in the sea > * (2021)

Digital (2100 x 2100 px)

An individual digital diary project exploring confession. A conversation with the fish. A digital altar.

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*<Digital Diaries: a boygirl’s altar of Chinatown> * (2023)

Mixed Media, Photography, Digital Collage (1,408 x 2,002 px)

An individual project exploring digital poetics, using photography and transmuting it
into a digital collage, a conversation, building a digital altar. Contains photography of moments in Chintatown, Boston, MA. The script and text serves as a conversation, as poetics with the altar, discussions of displacement and home. To be in conversation with the altar.

digital diaries * (2021 - ongoing)

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*<Digital Diaries: a boygirl’s confessions> * (2023)

Digital 1080 x 1080 px

An individual digital diary project exploring confession. A digital altar.

*<Digital Diaries: a boygirl’s altar (2023)> * (2023)

Mixed Media, Photography, Digital Collage (1,408 x 2,002 px)

An individual project exploring digital poetics, using photography transmuting it into a glitch-
digital collage, a conversation, building an altar from my grief. Contains photography of final moments with my father, my father’s garden, the koi fish at the restaurant by the hospital.

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*<the heart is an orange * (2022/2024)

Mixed Media, Photography, Digital Collage (16:9),(1,408 x 2,002 px)

An individual project exploring digital poetics, using photography and transmuting it into a glitch-digital collage, a conversation about the heart.(Later published in Vănguard Zine: Issue 6).

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* <Sext_> * (2022/2024)

Digital (1,408 x 2,002 px)

An individual project exploring digital poetics, using a text message, distorting it and turning it into a poem, a conversation about the heart. (Later published in Vănguard Zine: Issue 6).

*<soft_altar> * (2023)

Mixed Media, Photography, Digital 4" x 6"

An individual project exploring my roots. Photos capture a CVS bag containing Tigers Balm at the hospital whereI visited my father and of my mother’s window. Sketches are a conversation with the self. Everything becomes a collage, becoming an altar.

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