Writer Mai Neng Moua is one of four Minnesota artists who will be visiting Gloucester next month as participants in Arts on Main’s Artist in Residency program, sponsored by The Cook Foundation. She and the others will conduct free public workshops as part of their residencies.
Author of “The Bride Price: A Hmong Wedding Story” and editor of the anthology “Bamboo Among the Oaks: Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans,” Moua writes fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry about her experiences as a Hmong American. She will be in Gloucester from Feb. 27 through March 12.
In a telephone interview Monday, Moua said that she came to the U.S. as an eight-year-old in 1981 with her mother and two siblings. Her father died in the “secret war” the United States waged in Laos during the Vietnam War, and her mother managed to escape to Thailand with three children in tow. There, they lived in the crowded, teeming Ban Vinai refugee camp for four years before finally being relocated to the U.S. Non...