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Juliette Chen

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Juliette Chen's collection of poems, stories, and prints is entitled Home Water, a literal translation of the Vietnamese term "nhà nước", which means "country". This seems an appropriate title for an immigrant perpetually caught between different cultures. Juliette's writing and prints are suffused with a wistfulness for vanished worlds. Like Lot's wife, the immigrant knows the risk of looking back but cannot help herself.

Juliette was raised in a family that always managed to keep one step ahead of colonies that were toppling like dominoes during the last century. The youngest child of a Taiwanese professor and a Vietnamese mother, by the age of three she was speaking Vietnamese, Fujianese, Cantonese, and English, with a smattering of French and Japanese thrown in the mix. Raised in the former British colony of Hong Kong, it is ironic that she has washed up on the shores of yet another former British colony—America.

After finishing college in Tokyo, Juliette moved back to Hong Kong where she worked as a writer and reporter for various news magazines. She moved to California's Bay Area after getting married.

Possessed of a restless nature, she has, at various times, been a freelance editor and writer for The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the editor of a travel database, a medical interpreter, mail carrier, union shop steward, union columnist, furniture upholsterer, and police cadet. She is currently working on several children's books with her husband.

One of her proudest moments as a poet was the day she received a call from Robin Morgan, then Guest Editor-in-Chief of Ms. Magazine. Juliette was informed that her poem, "Dinner with an Eligible Bachelor", would be included in Ms. Magazine's "Best of 30 Years of Fiction and Poetry" issue, in the company of luminaries such as Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker.

Over the years, Juliette's poems have been regularly anthologized by American and international publishers, including Hachette, Hong Kong University Press, and The Oxford University Press.