Each day counting down to the announcement of the Minnesota Book Awards, we highlight one of the thirty-two finalists. Today we feature 2015 Poetry finalist Hieu Minh Nguyen.
Raw Emotion in Powerful Verse
This Way to the Sugar by Hieu Minh Nguyen
Published by: Write Bloody Publishing
Category sponsored by Wellington Management
With themes of assimilation, conformity, homophobia, and sexuality, the poems in this debut collection are a fearless and brutal dissection of trauma, and desire. There are ghosts in This Way to the Sugar, memories which haunt long after they are buried – half-recollections of childhood seen through an adult lens where seemingly harmless moments take on a sinister significance after innocence is gone. These poems remind us to “Take this body and see a body, where so many see a grave.”
About the Author:
Hieu Minh Nguyen is a poet, author, and performer. He is a Kundiman fellow and recipient of a VERVE grant from Intermedia Arts as well as the Minnesota Emerging Writers’ Grant from the Loft Literary Center. He has been published in The Journal, PANK, Anti-, Muzzle, decomP, Indiana Review, and other journals.
The reviews are in:
“This Way to the Sugar explodes with a longing to hold the past and future…These are gut-wrenching, thought-provoking, death-defying poems filled with brilliant bursts of gusto that will clear out your ‘house…infested with subtitles.’ Read this wondrous debut to forever remember the heart’s tears are the soul’s true diamonds.” – Ed Bok Lee, author of Whorled and Real Karaoke People.
“You owe it to yourself to read this book. That may sound exaggerated, but it is my hallowed truth: Hieu Minh Nguyen’s poetry reminds me why I began writing and why I love this genre. “His work is crisp and brave and incredibly alive. Each poem will thump inside you like a new heart.” – Sierra DeMulder, author of New Shoes on a Dead Horse
“’I won’t tell you how I survived the wreckage,’ Hieu Minh Nguyen writes in his stunning debut collection, This Way to the Sugar. The book is a visceral survey of the ruins, scanning the violence enacted through race and heritage, sexuality and homophobia.” – Michael Mlekoday, author of The Dead Eat Everything
Videos:
Join us at the Awards Gala!
Award winners will be announced at the 27th Annual Minnesota Book Awards Gala on Saturday, April 18 at the historic St. Paul Union Depot. The opening reception begins at 7 p.m., followed by the awards ceremony at 8 p.m. Tickets are $50 and are available by visiting www.thefriends.org/gala.
Have you read This Way to the Sugar? What are your thoughts? We welcome your comments!