Xuân Quỳnh

Hà Đông, Hanoi, Vietnam

Xuân Quỳnh (6 October 1942 – 29 August 1988) was a famous Vietnamese poet. Born in the village of La Khê (now Hà Đông province), Nguyễn Thị Xuân Quỳnh was raised by her grandmother and showed a talent for dance. Recruited by the Central Art Troupe in her early teens, she was trained as a dancer and traveled the world to perform. During the 1960s, she began pursuing writing, studying with the Writers’ Association. She worked with the weekly arts newspaper Văn nghệ, the official newspaper of the Hanoi Women’s Union (Hội Liên hiệp Phụ nữ Việt Nam), and the publishing house Tác Phẩm Mới.

In her poems like “Thuyền và Biển” (Boat and Sea) and “Thơ Tình Cuối Mùa Thu” (Love Song for End of Autumn), Xuân Quỳnh's language evokes a depth of feeling and romantic yearning. She also wrote children’s poetry, collected in the book "Bầu trời trong quả trứng" (The Sky within an Egg). Some of her works have been set to music or loosely adapted onscreen. Notably, her 1967 poem “Waves” is taught in Vietnamese schools. She married distinguished poet and playwright Lưu Quang Vũ. They and their 12-year-old son Lưu Quỳnh Thơ tragically died in a car accident in Hải Dương city on 29 August 1988. In 2017, the Vietnamese government posthumously awarded Xuân Quỳnh the Hồ Chí Minh Prize, the country’s highest artistic honor.