Writing
I write articles and essays for print, online and audio. I've also written for performance, and am currently pursuing writing for stage (and screen). I cover a wide range of topics including literature, multilingualism, food, art, ethics, public health, social history, migration, multiculturalism, travel and Vietnamese diaspora. Here are some of the outlets my writing has been published in:
Disegno • ABC Religion and Ethics • Powerhouse Museum • Crikey • COLORS • Monocle Radio • Courrier International • diaCRITICS • State Library of NSW • Sydney Review of Books • Art Monthly Australasia • Meanjin • Museum of Contemporary Art Australia • Fields & Stations • Pencilled In • The New York Times • Eureka Street • Roads & Kingdoms • Womankind • Southerly • Overland • ABC • New Philosopher • Griffith Review • SBS • The Big Issue • Kill Your Darling • peppermint • Peril • Trunk Books • Lonely Planet • Graphic Medicine • Language on the Move
An Elite Education (Sydney Review of Books)
For one thing, I was not surprised that the man holding the highest office in Australia had asked me the same old tired question I’d heard a hundred times before.
The whole animal (Overland)
Now, more than ever, we need to reckon with our relationship with food and our consumption of non-native fauna.
Western Sydney is dead, long live Western Sydney! (SRB x UTP)
It doesn’t surprise me when I see the children of non-white migrants claim the identity of being from Western Sydney; if they grew up in a suburb with some notoriety then all the better.
Five common myths about raising bilingual children (SBS)
In our research for My Bilingual Family, a new podcast series from SBS, we met a number of bilingual families struggling with language in different ways.
A tale of two Michaels (The Guardian Australia)
Empathy is useless if it’s of the ‘thoughts and prayers’ variety. As Covid takes hold, south-western Sydney needs vaccines
Sydney lockdown: if we’re all in this together, let’s ditch the scapegoating (The Guardian)
There is a moral cost to doing the greatest good for the greatest number.
Muddy Ambiguities (Australian Book Review)
Kupersmith’s exploration of the complex relationship the Vietnamese diaspora have with the homeland is both welcome and intriguing.
Conflicted Feelings (The Griffith Review)
In a busy room at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, an unusual canvas piques the interest of many.
Gambling Research bankrolled by the gambling industry? That’s a problem (Crikey)
University of Sydney’s new gambling research centre is funded by ‘generous’ gaming companies, compromising its research - no matter the spin.
Thai Linh (COLORS X EDITORIAL| VIETNAM)
Hanoi-based artist Thai Linh appropriates the past to imagine Vietnam’s technological future.
The House of Youssef by Yumna Kassab (Mascara Literary Review)
Perhaps the truth is, sometimes we simply can’t stay afloat and we can’t keep the plane in the air—but we can create something meaningful from the wreckage.
Strangers on Country (Kill Your Darlings)
What does it mean to travel as an Asian Australian on Aboriginal land?
Arrangements /ə’reɪn(d)ʒm(ə)nts/ (BLEED/Running Dog)
At home afterwards, I listen to those variations over and over again. Then slowly, ever so slowly, I realise that this is what it means to be part of a diaspora: perhaps we are all simply arrangements of sounds from elsewhere, composed long ago.
Coming of age in Cabramatta (Sydney Review of Books)
The Coconut Children is novel that will resonate with many of us who grew here in Australia. It’s a deeply spiritual contribution to the ongoing conversation between the past and the present, the dead and the living.
The late-night meal in Ho Chi Minh City that inspired a Bankstown cafe's key dish
The meal inspired 'District 3 pasta', one of the signature dishes at Kinx Café in Bankstown.
Bringing up a bilingual child (ABC News)
Bringing up a bilingual child is hard work. But passing on your mother language is a gift beyond words
A mythical country (State Library of NSW)
As compelling as these artworks are to me, the truth is I can’t help feeling an enormous sense of loss when I look at them.
Larpb padt sandwich (Fields & Stations)
This is not a sandwich that’s been toned down for the farang palate: it demands an embrace of a new world way of eating.
An act of recovery: Comics from the Vietnamese diaspora (diaCRITICS)
The absence of photographs in many of our lives is why comics feel like an act of recovery, with images created from memory, imagination, and reportage—to fill in the gaps.
Australia in three books (Meanjin)
Growing up I struggled to maintain much interest in ‘Australian culture’—whatever that was—let alone aspiring to be involved with it.
My Junot Díaz Problem (Meanjin)
At the time Zinzi Clemmons was confronting Junot Díaz at the Sydney Writers’ Festival about his past mistreatment of her, I was elsewhere in the same building attending a writing workshop on literary nonfiction.
Welcome to the neighbourhood (New York Times)
After enduring the struggle to buy a home, a multicultural crowd of friends gathers for a Hindu celebration.
Learning through their stories (New York Times)
Project type
The enduring tradition of the famous Portuguese egg tart (Roads & Kingdoms)
The tart’s sticky sweetness fills my mouth. It may have originated in a distant place on the Iberian Peninsula, but in Dili, the pastel da nata is as everyday as bread.
