Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin was one of our Fall 2025 Digital Residents. As a part of this program, we do Q&As with our residents to feature them, their work, and their words. See our Q&A with Kyla-Yến below, and explore more Spotlights here.
TSW: What is a question you’re asking yourself these days, and what is a question you or your work is asking of your reader?
Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin: I ask myself how far I can push my writing, in terms of both content and craft, and I ask my readers how far they can allow themselves to be pushed by my writing. I think literature should always challenge, both those who create and consume it, but not just challenge for the sake of challenging — it must make us better writers, readers, neighbors, comrades, and resisters. If the pieces I write don’t feel like the equivalent of banging your head against the glass to be let out, or the warmth of the fire set loose on the oppressor’s house, or the first hopeful, hesitant step into a sanctuary where you can finally breathe — then what’s the point of them?
TSW: Who do you bring into the room with you when you write, and/or, who do you consider your work to be in conversation with? Who are you writing for?
KG: I’ve been considering these questions a lot, actually, especially whenever I enter a literary space. Because it’s never other authors I’m thinking about when I write, even my favorites — although I love and learn from and pass on their work. I write for my Ngoại, and my partner, and even my estranged family, and my relatives I never met, and my friends, and my old confidants and exes and enemies who went out with the tide, and my pets, and my teachers, and my future children. My writing is in conversation with the histories and confessions and gossip and playlists and arguments and jokes and dreams of everyone I’ve ever loved or will love, even for a few minutes. When I write, they’re all there, too. See, although I consider myself a writer first and foremost, I’m a writer because I’m in the Vietnamese American diaspora; because I’m queer and trans; because I was once a daughter; because I’ve been a victim of abuse; because I and my family have suffered from war, colonialism, and capitalism; because I’m a partner, a friend, a (cat) mother, a community member, a descendant, an ancestor — because I’ve had so many words that hold so many worlds, and all I’ve ever wanted to do was give them away.
TSW: What’s a mantra or motto that you have in mind these days when you are writing or creating? Is there a writing routine or ritual that keeps you beginning?
KG: As a writer, I live by the idea that everything I do is a part of and for my writing. I’m a vessel for my writing, and so writing colors everything in my life. Sleeping, eating, breathing — it’s all process and practice and material. Every metaphor I witness, every scene and dialogue I experience, every lesson I learn, is waiting to be translated onto the page, and it’s my responsibility to do that, or to let them disappear — and sometimes, their disappearance, their absence on the page, is also the writing.
