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College of Arts and Humanities

Mai Der Vang

Assistant Professor

English | 559.278.4913 | Office: Peters Building 445

maidervang@csufresno.edu

Education

  • Columbia University - M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry)
  • University of Californa, Berkeley - B.A. in English

Courses Taught

  • Poetry Writing, Undergraduate Workshop
  • Poetry Writing, Graduate Workshop
  • Literary Editing and Publishing, Philip Levine Prize for Poetry
  • Form and Theory of Poetry
  • Literary Witches
  • Refugee Poetics
  • English Senior Seminar
  • Thesis Advising

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.