Thanh Huyen Dao was born in 1969 in North Vietnam amidst American bombings, 15 years after Dien Bien Fu. That did not prevent her from learning French at secondary school, and later at university. In 1993, she successfully passed an entrance exam for Vietnamese national television to present the news in French. “There aren’t any journalism schools in Vietnam. Journalism is a blend of current events, subjectivity and literature. Journalists do not exercise the profession as their main activity. First, they work for a State organization. This work then gives them the ‘right’ to write.” In 1995, she settled in Lille for two years and took courses at the Lille School of Journalism (Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme). When she returned to Vietnam, she joined the national television network, from which she resigned on 31 August 1999.

In Vietnam, freelancers are unable to earn a living from their profession, so Thanh Huyen Dao decided to invent a new approach. She wanted to provide a fresh perspective on the Vietnamese community living abroad, particularly in France, the United States and Ho Chi Minh City, from her North-Vietnamese point of view. Her special report takes a look at France and the United States, where the largest proportion of Viet Kieu are found.

Achievements since winning the Grant

Between 2000 and 2002, several of her articles on the Viet Kieu were published in Vietnam (in the Courrier du Vietnam and Etudiant du Vietnam) and France (in Ouest-France). Until 1999, she continued to work for Vietnamese national television. In 2000, she became a freelance journalist for the Infosud agency in Lausanne and the Sylia agency in Montpellier, as well as for Ouest-France, which published her special report on the Vietnamese diaspora.  In 2001, she received an assignment in Vietnam for the Lille School of Journalism.