Mai Der Vang is the author of YELLOW RAIN (Graywolf Press, 2021), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy
of American Poets, an American Book Award, and a Northern California Book Award. YELLOW RAIN was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, PEN/Voelcker Award, the LA Times Book
Prize, and the California Book Awards. Her first collection, AFTERLAND (Graywolf Press, 2017), received the First Book Award from the Academy of American
Poets, was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry, and was a finalist for
the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her third collection, PRIMORDIAL, is forthcoming in 2025 from Graywolf Press.
The recipient of a Guggenheim and Lannan Literary Fellowship, she served as a Visiting
Writer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Tin House, the American Poetry Review, among other journals and anthologies. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, espnW, and elsewhere. Mai Der also co-edited How Do I Begin: A Hmong American Literary Anthology with the Hmong American Writers’ Circle. She completed residencies at Civitella Ranieri and Hedgebrook. Born and raised in
Fresno, California, she earned degrees from the University of California, Berkeley
and Columbia University. Mai Der teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.
