Chromatography of a Memory: Master Class with Vi Khi Nao

​Vi Khi Nao’s narratives range from the half-dreamt to the hallucinatory—however, as fluid as these works are in both reality and genre, they are consistently grounded in interrogating the existing societal structures of economic disparity, patriarchy, and colonialism, especially as they intersect with her Vietnamese heritage. In her masterclass “Chromatography of a Memory,” Nao teaches students how to arrive at hidden truths within the world—which is sometimes only possible through indirect means.

​Choose a single, powerful memory. In this class, we will resist the impulse to narrate it as a story. Instead, we will pull it apart into its constituent layers/parts: the sensory data, the emotional residue, the false implants, the cultural context, and the absences. Each layer will be written as a separate, parallel text (e.g., a sensory data log, an emotional map, a list of lies, cultural context, etc). In the end, what we create won't be a memory of a memory, but a new vehicle (say an Alfa Romeo, Bentley, Cadillac Vistiq) for our neurons to drive our present tense forward.

​VI KHI NAO is the author of seven poetry collections & of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), the novel, Swimming with Dead Stars. She won the Nightboat Books Prize for Poetry in 2014 for her collection, The Old Philosopher. The Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute, her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She  was the 2022 recipient of the Jim Duggins, PhD Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize.

​The Italy Letters

​A mesmerizing epistolary tale of a sensual queer love affair set against the backdrop of Las Vegas’ gritty underbelly.

​The Italy Letters is a slim, powerful shot of literary fantasia from one of America’s best-kept secrets. Long an underground favorite, visionary writer Vi Khi Nao weaves an unforgettable and highly distinctive story of a love affair suffused with longing, erotic passion, and heartbreak—all while painting a picture of the gritty underside of Las Vegas.

​This beautiful and mesmerizing novel by a queer Vietnamese American writer is a brilliant and unclassifiable work of fiction that takes the form of a series of letters written by the unnamed narrator to her lover in Italy … part of a stream-of-consciousness narrative that is by turns poignant, bawdy, funny, and disturbing—and often beautifully poetic. 

​Along the way, the story touches on the immigrant experience, LGBTQIA identity, social class, writing, betrayal, sex, and homesickness. The result is an authentically distinctive piece of writing from a writer on the cusp of wide acclaim.