Jer Xiong
President
Jer Xiong grew up in Chico and Oroville, CA. She graduated from CSU, Chico with a B.A. in English & minors in Creative Writing and Asian Studies. Currently, she’s a 2nd year in the MFA Creative Writing program at Fresno State. She grew up reading YA novels and fanfiction which nourished her love for reading and writing. Although she dabbles in fiction and poetry, she mainly writes creative nonfiction, interrogating the complexity of her Hmong-American identity.
She’s been a writing instructor, writing tutor, a peer mentor, an officer, and an editor for the Watershed Review and The Normal School, where she currently serves as the nonfiction editor and managing web editor. She also works as a student assistant, writing for Fresno State’s College of Arts and Humanities.
Jer started this organization with her colleagues and friends because she believed in the importance of Hmong American writing and believed that a space was necessary for her fellow Hmong writers to grow and support each other. This community is highly important to her as it is this same community that helped her realize her path in creative writing. She hopes to continuously uplift and support Hmong artists of all mediums.
Nou Her
Vice President
Nou Her was born in the refugee camps of Thailand and flew to the states with her parents when she was around 1. She has been in Fresno, CA since. The eldest of seven siblings, she received her BA in English at Fresno State where she is also currently a third year graduate student attending Fresno State’s MFA program. She studies fiction and writes about the interconnections of love, power, gender, and her Hmong identity.
Nou has worked at her university’s writing center for four years. She currently teaches English as a Teaching Associate in the English Department. She also works as a graduate student assistant to the Creative Writing office where she hosts the Thoughts Aloud podcast, and serves as an associate editor for The Normal School.
Yia Lee
Treasurer
Yia Lee was born and raised in Fresno, California. She is the middle daughter in a family of nine. As a young child, her father encouraged her to read. She ignored him until one summer when, out of sheer boredom, she picked up a children’s novel and somehow became hooked. She has been an avid reader since. Her love for reading led to her desire to write. However, there were no novels with Hmong stories around.
For many years Yia loved reading, and disassociated her Hmong identity with reading and writing. But while attending UC Davis, Yia became more interested in her family roots. If she could not find any Hmong stories to read, perhaps she could write them herself. During her reading and writing journey, Yia joined the Hmong American Writers’ Circle. This led her to discover an emerging Hmong American literature field, and inspire her to continue writing.
Yia is currently a fiction candidate in Fresno State’s MFA program. She is a Teaching Associate at Fresno State as well as an assistant editor for The Normal School.
Mai Der Vang
Faculty Adviser
Mai Der Vang is the author of Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award in Poetry, and a finalist for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The recipient of a 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, and elsewhere.
Mai Der is a member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle where she co-edited How Do I Begin: A Hmong American Literary Anthology. A Kundiman fellow, Mai Der has 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. She teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Fresno State.
Hmong American Ink & Stories 