Dr Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is an award-winning writer and journalist. Her writing in Vietnamese received the 2010 Poetry of the Year Award from the Hanoi Writers Association, and First Prize in the Poetry Competition celebrating 1,000 Years of Hanoi. Her debut novel and first book in English, The Mountains Sing, is an international bestseller, and winner of several awards, and has been short-listed for the 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Quế Mai has a PhD in Creative Writing from the UK’s Lancaster University. She has been named by Forbes Vietnam as one of 20 inspiring women of 2021. Her second novel in English, Dust Child, is forthcoming in spring 2023.