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Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is an award-winning Vietnamese writer whose debut novel The Mountains Sing, published in English in 2020, won the International Book Awards in 2021 and was runner-up in the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. It portrays the lives of four generations of a Vietnamese family enduring many hardships, something she understands well from her own upbringing.

In conversation with presenter Felicity Finch, Quế Mai shares her writing process as she works on her second novel Dust Child, which is about Amerasians, children of American military men who were abandoned during The Vietnam War. Meetings with her New York publisher and editor Betsy Gleick help guide her through the many months of development as well as her desire to retain the Vietnamese-ness of her prose.

This programme was first broadcast in May 2022, but for this version, as dust Child is about to be published, Felicity takes the opportunity to catch up with Quế Mai, to find out how that feels.

Presenter/producer: Felicity Finch