Image of Bao Phi by Anna Min of Min Enterprises.
This is Day Three of our four-day festival! Check out the complete list of events that are part of the 10th Annual San José Poetry Festival! Our festival pass will get you into all live events and online events.
This event is free to all at the Central Park Library, 2635 Homestead Rd, Santa Clara, CA
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On September 7 at 11 a.m. at the Central Park Library's Margie Edinger Room, join us for a special reading of select stories by the award-winning Minnesota poet and children’s book author, Bao Phi! He will be sharing from several of his children’s books, including his first book, A Different Pond, which received six starred reviews and won multiple awards including a Caldecott Honor. During this special visit he will answer questions from children and adults about his stories and writing journey.
Seating is first come, first served. This is a non-ticketed event. All-ages are welcome.
Your attendance to this program grants permission to the City of Santa Clara to take your photograph and/or your child's photograph for marketing purposes.
About the author:
A two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist, Bao Phi has appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons Def Poetry, featured in the live performances and taping of the blockbuster diasporic Vietnamese variety show Paris By Night 114: Tôi Là Người Việt Nam, and a poem of his appeared in the 2006 Best American Poetry anthology. His poems and essays are widely published in numerous publications including Screaming Monkeys and Spoken Word Revolution Redux. A short story of his, Revolution Shuffle, appeared in the anthology Octavia’s Brood: Stories from Social Justice Movements, AK Press, 2015, and an essay of his was included in the anthology A Good Time for the Truth, edited by Sun Yung Shin, Minnesota Historical Society Press.
He has two collections of poems, both published by Coffeehouse Press, Sông I Sing and Thousand Star Hotel, the latter of which was nominated for the Minnesota Book Award, named by NPR as one of the best books of 2017, and was chosen as 2017’s best poetry book of the year by San Francisco State’s Poetry Center.
Covers of books written by Bao Phi. Image of Bao Phi by Anna Min of Min Enterprises.
His first children’s book, A Different Pond, received six starred reviews and won multiple awards including a Caldecott Honor, an Ezra Jack Keats Honor, Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association award for best picture book, the Minnesota Book Award for picture books, and the Charlotte Zolotow Award for excellence in children’s book writing. It made several best books of the year lists, including Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and Shelf Awareness. He has written three additional children’s books since then: My Footprints. (2019), Hello, Mandarin Duck! (2022), and You Are Life (2022).
He was named by Minneapolis Monthly as Best Author 2016, and the Artist of the Year (2017) and Author of the Year (2018) by City Pages, and was awarded the Kay Sexton Award in 2024. He was recently on the editing team for We The Gathered Heat, a forthcoming anthology of Asian American and Pacific Islander poets in the oral and spoken word traditions.
Born in Saigon shortly before the mass exodus of his family and many others to the United States, Bao is a Vietnamese American raised in the Phillips neighborhood of south Minneapolis. He currently lives in Minneapolis with his child and their cat.
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Want more poetry? Check out the rest of the San José Poetry Festival lineup.
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