Mother Tongue

Writer/screenwriter and journalist whose work focuses on women and dislocation. Her first feature-length screenplay, Cotton Mary, won a New York Foundation for the Arts award and was produced by Merchant Ivory. Her film/theater reviews and essays have appeared in publications such as The International Herald Tribune/NYT, The Far Eastern Economic Review and the Asia Wall Street Journal. Viets has taught in the MFA programs at Towson University’s Department of Theater Arts and at The American University in Washington, DC, specializing in literature and film. She currently teaches in the MA in Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. Excerpts from her memoir entitled, Maryna, After the War, have been published in Thin Air, Nowhere Magazine and shortlisted for Wasafiri’s New Writing Prize in London. Viets received her B.A. from Oberlin College in political science and an MFA from Columbia University.