Katie Ka Vang. (Picture by Noemí Gonzalez)
Every month on The Subtext, Brian speaks with a playwright about life, writing, and no matter itches we’re scratching. On this month’s episode, Brian heads to St. Paul, Minn., to talk with playwright and storyteller Katie Ka Vang.
Katie remembers her expertise rising up because the youngest of seven kids raised by Hmong refugee immigrants, with their church on the heart of their lives. At 18 she adopted her older sisters to Minnesota, the place she has lived ever since. She discusses writing tales about her Hmong American neighborhood and lately discovering herself grounded in these roots after having drifted other than this neighborhood.
She obtained a most cancers prognosis across the identical time as her acceptance to Brown’s Playwriting MFA program, and determined to not defer enrollment. Her most cancers was in remission by the point faculty began, however relapsed a yr and half into this system, so Katie accomplished this system remotely whereas receiving therapy in Minneapolis. Two bone marrow transplants and an extended restoration course of later, Katie is wanting ahead to what this subsequent section of her life has in retailer. She is at the moment a Constellations Fellow on the Middle for Cultural Energy, the place tells tales in partnership with the Indigenous Roots Cultural Arts Middle.
Katie’s work explores the complexity of cultures and communities, diaspora, dis-ease, and transformation. Her writing consists of AGAIN the musical, Fertile Grounds, WTF, Hmong Bollywood, 5:1 Which means of Freedom; 6:2 Use of Sharpening, Quick FWD Motions, In Quarantine, FINAL ROUND, and Spirit Belief. Her performs have been developed and offered at East West Gamers, Blended Blood Theater, Pangea World Theater, Pillsbury Home Theatre, Theater Mu, Leviathan Lab, Bushwick Starr, and extra. She obtained the 2022-23 McKnight and 2019-20 Many Voices fellowship on the Playwrights’ Middle, and was a member of East West Gamers 21-23 Playwright’s Group.
This episode can be discovered right here.
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