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"I want to believe, daddy!"

Coyote's Flying Saucer Retrieval & Repair, Jacumba, CA.

Bryan Thao Worra: A timeline

From time to time, I get requests from students asking to interview me or who've been assigned to do a research project about a poet or some other project of interest. While my wikipedia entry has been kept reasonably up to date, it can seem like a lot to plow through, or researchers can be uncertain how everything all fits together. So, to be of some assistance, here's a "streamlined" version of my timeline that can hopefully serve as a starting point for various inquiries.

• January 1, 1973: Born in Vientiane, Laos.
• July, 1973: Emigrate to the United States.
• June 14, 1976: Naturalized as a US citizen, Missoula, Montana.
• 1977: Move to Anchorage, Alaska.
• 1981: Move to Ypsilanti, Michigan.
• 1985-1987: Attends Rudolf Steiner School of Ann Arbor, receives a Waldorf-style education.
• 1986: Move to Saline, Michigan. Attends Saline High School from 1987-1991.

• 1991-1997: Attends Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio. Joins Sigma Delta Phi.
• 1997: Organizes Hmong Community Leadership Conference with Doua Thor, Sao Thao and Fue Kue in Westerville, Ohio at Otterbein College.
• 1997-1998: Goes to Washington D.C. for Hmong National Development.
• 1998-2007: Moves to St. Paul, Minnesota, begins career in non-profit sector, including Hmong Tribune; Asian Media Access; Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly; National Youth Leadership Council.
• 2001: Attends SatJaDham Lao Literary Project conference in Minneapolis. Meets the Kouanchao family.
• 2002: Bamboo Among the Oaks released by MN Historical Society Press.
• April, 2002: Convenes 5 Senses Show of Hmong & Lao Art at Babylon Gallery.
• 2003: Travels overseas, reunited with long-lost family after 30 years in Modesto.
• 2003: Chapbook The Tuk-Tuk Diaries: Our Dinner With Clusterbombs released.
• Spring, 2004: First meeting with Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay.
• July 24th, 2004: Lao'd And Clear reading at the Loft Literary Center
• 2005: Works as interim executive director of Hmong American Institute for Learning.
• 2006: Special guest at Diversicon 14.
• 2006: First meeting with Catzie Vilayphonh.
• October, 2006: Death of adoptive father, John Worra in Michigan.
• 2007-2011: Moves to North Minneapolis, Hawthorne Neighborhood.
• August, 2007: First full-length book, On the Other Side of the Eye.
• August, 2008: Second full-length book, BARROW.
• September, 2008: Begins work with Lao Assistance Center, Minneapolis, MN.
• November, 2008: Third full-length book, Winter Ink. 
• 2009: Awarded National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Literature.
• April, 2009: Fourth full-length book, Tanon Sai Jai, following meeting with Noi Sengsourigna.
• August, 2010: Convenes 1st National Lao American Writers Summit in Minneapolis, MN with Chanida Phaengdara Potter, Saymoukda Vongsay, and Catzie Vilayphonh.
• October, 2010: Organizes Legacies of War: Refugee Nation Twin Cities interdisciplinary exhibit on UXO in Laos at Intermedia Arts with Lao Assistance Center, Legacies of War, and TeAda Productions.
• 2011-2012: Begins to split time between Minnesota and California.
• November, 2011: Accepted into the international professional Horror Writers Association.
• 2012: Represents Laos during London Summer Games Poetry Parnassus.
• 2013: Fifth full-length book, DEMONSTRA with artist Vongduane Manivong.
• 2014: Elgin Book of the Year Award from Science Fiction Poetry Association.
• July, 2014: Begins to split time between Hemet, Ukiah, and Dublin, CA.
• February, 2015: Lifetime member of H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.
• April, 2015: 2nd National Lao American Writers Summit convened in MN.
• July, 2015: Guest of Honor at CONVergence convention, Bloomington, MN.
• December, 2015: Southeast Asian American Legacies symposium, presenting with Mai Der Vang.
• February, 2016: Enters Modesto Lao Theravada Buddhist temple as a novice monk.
• March, 2016: Presents at UC Davis on Refugee Memories and Imagination in Disaspora.
• April, 2016: Teaches first classes at Kearny Street Workshop, San Francisco, CA.
• April, 2016: Featured poet, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.
• May, 2016: Keynote speaker, 3rd National Lao American Writers Summit.
• July, 2016: Begins to split time between Pasadena, Hemet, and Dublin, CA.
• August, 2016: Elected president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
• November, 2016: Presents at Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center CTRL+ALT: A Culture Lab on Imagined Futures.

As with any life, there's a lot more in between all of this, but these are some key points one can begin with. If you have any specific questions, you can always ask me.

From the Department of Truth Stranger than Fiction

Confession: There are some days I don't read past a headline because there's no way that the actual story can improve upon what I imagine it's about.

[Poet Spotlight] Irene Hsiao

Irene Hsiao is a writer, dancer, and photographer. Much of her aesthetic resonates deeply with my own as I consider her fabulous body of work and approach to the arts. I'm particularly interested in her Monster Studies, but go figure.

Her essays and poems have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, SF Weekly, KQED Arts, Bay Area Reporter, Newcity, Cambridge Quarterly, Victorian Poetry, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the US, Literary Imagination, Modern Philology, Word Riot, elimae, A Clean Well-Lighted Place, and Sweet, as well as in the book Peter Pan In and Out of Time. Science figures heavily in many of her poetry pieces, as I'll discuss later.

She has appeared with Kinetech Arts, Erica Mott Productions, Winifred Haun & Dancers, Alma Esperanza Cunningham Movement, Lenora Lee Dance, Labayen Dance/SF, and other companies in the US and Asia. It's often dazzling to behold her transgressive and experimental work.

She's well traveled, and has taught at the University of Chicago, UC Berkeley, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of San Francisco, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, City University of Hong Kong, and National Taipei University of Technology.

Her book of photography and text, Letter from Taipei, was published in 2014. She has been awarded the Louis Martz Prize by the William Carlos Williams Society and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Letter from Taipei is a picture book she made while teaching English at National Taipei University of Technology. It traces color and its absence and attempts to document the extraordinary in the ordinary in the streets of Taiwan.

Through photos and bilingual text, it is a spiritual inquiry inspired by a city that conceals its beauties in alleyways and small corners. "Though the book commemorates the particularity of the city of Taipei, it is a book for anyone who has ever been lonely in a strange place and anyone who enjoys hunting for beauty in unexpected places."

Irene Hsiao has worked as "a library attendant, library subject specialist, professor, editor, study guide and encyclopedia-entry writer, researcher, restaurant server, gelateria sales associate, cashier, ghostwriter, and unemployed sponge supported by her relatives." I find her journeys fascinating and inspiring in their own way. Or, at least, compelling warnings of how odd our journeys can become when we're on the artist's path. Needless to say, I empathize with her deeply.

One might argue you can see this labyrinthine journey reflected in her poem "An Autistic Man Lived on Frogs and Roots as He Wandered for Weeks in the Remote Escalante Desert of Southern Utah Until Being Rescued, Emaciated but Alive." It's a stark poem in many places, concluding "It's not the freeze but the thaw that aches / Suspended between salts in a nutrient brew / To double the disposition but not the history / To start again with the same material / To chance another meeting."

She has held "as few as 0 and as many as 8 jobs at a time, for as little as a week and as long as a year." She was a Regents’ scholar at UC Berkeley, where she earned a double BA in English and Molecular and Cell Biology and won the Chauncey Wetmore Wells Critical Essay Prize. She holds a PhD in literature from the University of Chicago.

Dig around the Word Riot archives and you can find her poem "To Pass the Time I Read About Astronomy," which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and I think it would have been a fine contender for a Rhysling Award. You can hear her give a live reading of it there, as well.

I was excited to see she has a poem online entitled "Anthology," in the same issue of Word Riot. I was curious to see how she approached the premise. I won't give it away, but I found it a delightful and surprising direction to take. I hope it's not too long before we see more poetry from her, or a full collection, which seems criminally overdue.

Be sure to visit her online at https://irenechsiao.wordpress.com/ and get to know her breathtaking body of work. It transforms you. Perhaps into a monster, too, perhaps something entirely different.