In celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month the Santa Clara City Library is thrilled to have acclaimed filmmaker, director, writer & entrepreneur Sahra Nguyen in discussion with SCCL librarian Danny Le, as a part of this webinar series for the month of May.
Born and raised in Boston, MA, Sahra graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a double major in Asian American Studies and World Arts & Cultures. She is the daughter of Vietnamese refugees.
She has served as the Director of the Writing Success Program at the University of California, Los Angeles where she helped undergraduate students develop critical thinking skills, self-empowerment and agency through the writing process.
Sahra has published an e-book of poetry titled, "One Ounce Gold," and has been published in the print anthology, "Pho For Life."
With early beginnings in spoken word poetry, Sahra has toured universities and venues across the country performing poetry and facilitating workshops at places including the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Cornell University's Women of Color Conference Keynote Speaker, Nuyorican Poet's Cafe and UMass Boston's Artist In Residence.
As a keynote speaker at Universities and conferences, Sahra speaks on a range of topics including Asian American issues + identity, pursuing a non-conventional creative career, the power of media + storytelling, and expanding the human potential beyond stereotypical ideas of success.
A longtime visual artist painting under the alias Vera Times, Sahra has collaborated with luxury brand COACH, been featured in the print magazine Time Out New York, featured digitally on 12ozProphet, exhibited with a roster of renowned street and graffiti artists, and painted walls in Miami, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Under her own production company, One Ounce Gold , in Spring 2014 Sahra created and filmed a documentary web series about NYC entrepreneurs called, "Maker's Lane," which was co-presented by the Smithsonian APAC and featured on Colorlines.com, NBCNews.com and Huffington Post. In September 2014, Sahra was honored with the May Takayanagi Making Waves Award by social justice leaders at Asian American Resource Workshop's 35th Anniversary celebration in Boston, MA.
Sahra continues her passion for storytelling and giving light to underrepresented stories as a Digital Contributor for NBC News, Blogger for Huffington Post, and Contributor for Complex Media's NTRSCTN.com
In early 2016, Sahra created, produced, and filmed "Self-Starters" which launched the video channel for NBC Asian America and published on NBCNews.com, "Self-Starters" was nominated for the EPPY Awards and LA Press Club Awards.
Mid-2016, Sahra sold her second documentary series to NBCNews.com, "Deported," which follows the grassroots fight to end deportation of Cambodian Americans from the U.S. to Cambodia.
In 2017, Sahra was nominated and selected to join the 2018 cohort of Google NextGen Tech Policy Leaders Program, where she meets monthly with leaders across the country to explore creative solutions at the intersection of tech policy and racial justice.
Sign ups are free through EventBrite.
www.sahravang.com
www.nguyencoffeesupply.com/
www.sclibrary.org
Sponsored by the Santa Clara City Library Foundation & Friends.
