Mong-Lan, American poet, born in Vietnam, writer, painter, photographer, dancer (of Argentine tango), singer (bel canto, tangos), and educator, left her native Vietnam on the last day of the evacuation of Saigon. Mong-Lan's first book of poems, Song of the Cicadas, won the 2000 Juniper Prize, the 2002 Great Lakes Colleges Association's New Writers Awards for Poetry and was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award. A Wallace E. Stegner Fellow in poetry for two years at Stanford University and a Fulbright Fellow in Vietnam, Mong-Lan received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona.