Photo by Carrie L. Swim

Alexandrine Vo (b. 1986) grew up in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam and is a political exile to the U.S. Previously based in New York City, she is now living and working in Los Angeles. Growing up in a Mahayana Buddhist family, she developed a love for the music and mystery of language through learning to memorize the Sutras.

First appearing in an anthology of Southern young poets at the age of thirteen, Alexandrine has been writing for over twenty years. At age sixteen, she was the only public school student in her state granted a writing honor by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). A Gates Scholar, she earned BA degrees in literature and philosophy from Baylor University where she was encouraged by former New York Poet Laureate, Jean Valentine, to pursue writing. While in a PhD program, her meeting with the poet W.S. Merwin solidified the decision to begin studying poetry formally at the Ezra Pound Center for Literature in Italy. This life-altering course led her to Boston University where she became a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow and a George Starbuck Fellow, holding an MFA in Creative Writing.

Her poems have been published in England, Ireland, France, and the U.S., appearing in Salamander, Poetry Ireland Review, Popshot Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, CALYX, The Bitter Oleander, and Fjords Review, among others. Alexandrine is the Featured Poet in The Stinging Fly’s Winter 2013-14 issue. Her work has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and for Best New Poets. Recently published poems may be found in The Carolina Quarterly (5/2018), The American Poetry Review (7/2018), and the 20th anniversary issue of Bellevue Literary Review (F/W 2021). They are anthologized in Two Countries: U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents (Red Hen Press) and Aolian Harp Anthology: 2021. She has completed a first full-length collection, As Though We Are One, which was named Finalist for the Kundiman Poetry Prize, and is currently at work on her second collection, A Sound as Sweet as Venom.