In 1853, a French missionary recorded that the Montagnards in Vietnam believed writing to be an act of magic. As a Montagnard American in the twenty-first century, H'Rina DeTroy believes writing to be a kind of sorcery, too.

 

She was the recipient of the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundations Winter 2020 Grant in Literature, and the 2019 Emerging Writer Fellowship at Aspen Word in Memoir. Roxane Gay selected her essay entitled The Vengeance of Elephants for the 2017 Curt Johnson Prose in Creative Nonfiction by the literary journal, December Magazine. Her personal essay, Knot, was published in the anthology Borderlands and Crossroads: Writing the Motherland by feminist publisher Demeter Press; the essay was also selected for the AWP Conference in Washington D.C. Her work has also appeared in the Huffington Post, OkayAfrica, The Villager, Flavorpill.com, Cultural Survival Quarterly, Glimpse Abroad Magazine, and other publications.

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She has a master's degree in Journalism and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College. An adjunct instructor in and around New York City, she also teaches private workshops in Creative Writing and cultivating creativity. A convert to the power of owning one's narrative in the face of systemic oppression, she created Apocalypse Never: Writing Our Origin Stories and Imaginative Futures as Montagnard Americans, a writing workshop that centers the Montagnard American and diasporic experience. She has also created Multi-Verses: Writing Our Immigrant Origin Stories. As a community arts organizer and activist, she is passionate about creating limitless spaces for Montagnard stories and imagination -- a magical weapon against structural legacies of erasure.

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