“I read what I want to read.
I write what I want to write.
That’s a great freedom not everyone has.
I’m humbled to have that opportunity in life.
As a Lao American writer, without naming names,
I didn’t always, sometimes still don’t, get invited to
“Join in any reindeer games.”
Over time, that gave me strength.
“Get my work out there anyway. Any way.”
I push myself to be rigorous, but not hidebound
To one leathery school or dogma.
My writing doesn’t have to be
Safe or conventional as a faithful hound by some sad fire.
I fret not for tenure tracks or professional posts to be happy,
Nor grand accolades or book deals the envy of fading fool Midas.
One dragon summer, I was a cultural Olympian,
The sole writer representing all Lao
During the London games.
Between that and other laurels of yore,
I’m obliged to think
“I’m doing something right, surely.”
But that and a cup of coffee will get you a cup of coffee.
—Bryan Thao Worra interview excerpt from “The Lantern Review.”
Join Bryan Thao Worra author of DEMONSTRA (2013); BARROW (2009); Winter Ink (2008); On the Other Side of the Eye (2007) and The Tuk-Tuk Diaries: Our Dinner with Cluster Bombs (2003) for a reading and dinner at Tube Factory artspace.
Worra’s work appears in over 100 international publications, including Astropoetica, Cha, Asian Pacific American Journal, Hyphen, Lantern Review, Kartika Review, Journal of the Asian American Renaissance, Expanded Horizons, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Strange Horizons, Tales of the Unanticipated, and Innsmouth Free Press.
He was selected as a Cultural Olympian during the 2012 London Summer Olympics’ Poetry Parnassus convened by the Southbank Centre. His work is part of the Smithsonian traveling exhibit “I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story.” He is the first Lao American to be accepted as a professional member of the Horror Writer Association and the Science Fiction Poetry Association, to which he currently serves as president. He is the first Lao American to hold an National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature and is a 2019 The Joyce Foundation Fellow.
In 2018, he was appointed by Governor Mark Dayton to serve on the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans to advise state legislators on policy. He works on Lao and Southeast Asian American refugee resettlement issues across the United States. Bryan Thao Worra is the Lao Minnesotan Poet Laureate, and the president of the international Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (est. 1978).
His forthcoming book is “Before We Remember We Dream” from Sahtu Press.
