In this biography
Quick facts
- Born
- Not reliably established
- Birthplace
- A refugee camp; precise location not independently established
- Country
- Laos
- Nationality
- Not independently established
- Known for
- Yellow Rage, Laos In The House and storytelling about Lao American refugee experience
- Creative fields
- Poetry, performance, writing and multimedia art
- Spoken word group
- Yellow Rage, founded with Michelle Myers
- Community project
- Founder and creative director of Laos In The House
- Knight support
- $25,000 Knight Arts Challenge award announced on 23 April 2012
- Fellowship
- 2019–2020 Dina Wind Art as Catalyst fellow at Fleisher Art Memorial
Why this life matters
Her performances and collaborative projects give Lao American refugee histories a public presence while creating opportunities for artists and different generations to exchange their stories.
Timeline
Key moments
A poem about Lao identity
Wrote You Bring Out The Laos In The House, later an inspiration for the community project.
Writing and performance support
Received Leeway Art and Change and Transformation awards; helped organise the first Lao American Writers Summit.
Knight award announced
Laos In The House: Voices from Four Decades of the Lao Diaspora received a $25,000 award.
Philadelphia performance showcase
The Laos In The House closing showcase brought Lao American performers together after a multidisciplinary exhibition.
Fleisher fellowship began
Started the twelve-month Dina Wind Art as Catalyst residency, announced by Fleisher on 9 September.
A Diaspora Vocabulary
The Chinese American Museum included her poem in its (Be)Spoken presentation.
Poetry, identity and a refugee family
Catzie Vilayphonh is a Lao American spoken word poet, writer and performance artist associated with Philadelphia. A child of refugees, she was born in a camp during her family’s journey to the United States. She describes herself as belonging to the ‘.5 Generation’, a position between inherited memories of displacement and life in America.
With Michelle Myers, she founded Yellow Rage, an Asian American women’s spoken word group that appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry. Her work draws on personal experience to examine racial stereotypes, language barriers and the difficulties of passing cultural knowledge between generations. Performance makes these subjects part of a shared encounter with an audience.
From a signature poem to Laos In The House
Her 2002 poem You Bring Out The Laos In The House became an inspiration for a broader arts project. Meeting other Lao writers, including Bryan Thao Worra in Minnesota in 2005, helped turn an individual exploration of identity into an effort to connect artists and make Lao audiences more visible.
Leeway supported writing and performance work in 2010, including collaboration with Thao Worra and Saymoukda Vongsay. A separate Knight Arts Challenge award, announced on 23 April 2012, provided $25,000 for Laos In The House. The funded proposal joined writing, performance and filmmaking workshops around stories within the Lao American community.
Bringing artists and community histories together
In 2015, Laos In The House presented a Philadelphia exhibition and performance programme involving artists from across the United States. Its visual work included drawings by survivors of unexploded ordnance in Laos, supplied through Legacies of War. The project treated artwork as a way to communicate histories that families might otherwise struggle to discuss.
Participant publisher Sahtu Press records the closing performance showcase on 2 May 2015, alongside daytime workshops at Asian Arts Initiative. Poetry, music, dance and theatre shared the programme. Vilayphonh’s organising therefore extended beyond presenting her own poems, creating occasions for other Lao American artists and community members to tell their stories publicly.
A fellowship and continuing public storytelling
Fleisher Art Memorial selected Vilayphonh as its 2019–2020 Dina Wind Art as Catalyst fellow. The twelve-month residency began in August 2019. Fleisher described a participatory approach developed with its programmes team and Southeast Philadelphia communities, building on earlier collaborations involving Lao New Year gatherings and independently produced Lao American films.
Her poetry also remains part of her public practice. The Chinese American Museum’s (Be)Spoken presentation includes A Diaspora Vocabulary, dated 2025. Across these different settings, her career connects the voice of an individual performer with the work of gathering people, preserving memories and making space for Lao American cultural expression.
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions about Catzie Vilayphonh
- What is Catzie Vilayphonh known for?
- She is known for spoken word with Yellow Rage and for founding Laos In The House, a project that promotes Lao American storytelling through the arts.
- Why is Catzie Vilayphonh included under Laos?
- The association reflects her documented Lao American identity and sustained work with Lao refugee stories and artists. Her career is based in the United States; no Lao citizenship is inferred.
- When did Laos In The House receive its Knight award?
- Leeway’s contemporary announcement records the $25,000 Knight Arts Challenge award on 23 April 2012. The Philadelphia exhibition and showcase followed in 2015.
- What was her Fleisher fellowship?
- She was the 2019–2020 Dina Wind Art as Catalyst fellow. The residency began in August 2019 and focused on participatory art and community relationships in Southeast Philadelphia.
Keep exploring
Lives connected to this story
- Bryan Thao Worra
Explore the Lao American poet who collaborated with Vilayphonh and helped connect a wider community of writers.
- Souvankham Thammavongsa
Read another Lao diaspora writer’s approach to language, family and the experience of migration.
Sources and further reading
Explore the evidence
These references support the biography and offer further reading. Official records, first-person accounts and independent reporting provide different perspectives; image records document attribution and licensing.
- 1. Asian Arts InitiativeCatzie Vilayphonh: artist directory
Complete institutional artist entry read. It supports Yellow Rage, refugee-family background and the 2015 programme. It gives 2013 for the Knight award; the contemporary 23 April 2012 grant announcement controls that date. Neither birthday nor precise camp location is established here; both are withheld. Lao American identity is a diaspora association, not evidence of citizenship.
- 2. Leeway FoundationCatzie Vilayphonh: biography and awarded grants
Complete grant history read, including 2010 writing/performance support and Transformation Award. Planned 2024 Sabaideefest activity is not described as a completed performance. No birthday is calculated from ages in other reporting.
- 3. Laos In The HouseOur Story
Complete project history read. It establishes the 2002 poem, 2005 meeting, project aims and exhibition contents. Its broad May 2015 wording is not converted into exact gallery opening dates or an incorporation date.
- 4. Leeway Foundation · 23 April 20122 Leeway Grantees receive Knight Arts Challenge Philadelphia Awards
Complete contemporary 23 April 2012 announcement read. It explicitly names Vilayphonh, the project, $25,000 award and workshop purpose; it resolves later biographies’ conflicting award years.
- 5. Sahtu PressSahtu Press at Laos in the House Exhibition
Complete retrospective read. This participant publisher explicitly records the closing showcase on 2 May 2015. That event is distinguished from the gallery exhibition and earlier promotional schedules.
- 6. Fleisher Art Memorial · 9 September 2019Catzie Vilayphonh Named the Next Wind Fellow
Complete 9 September 2019 institutional announcement read. It explicitly states the 2019–2020 fellowship, twelve-month duration and August start; anticipated 2020 summit plans are not treated as completed events.
- 7. Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles(Be)Spoken: Poems from Our Asian American Voices
Complete museum presentation read. It lists A Diaspora Vocabulary with 2025 as the work date and identifies Michelle Myers as Yellow Rage co-founder. That year is not turned into an unprovided exhibition-opening date.
- 8. Wikimedia Commons · Knight FoundationCatzie Vilayphonh - Flickr - Knight Foundation.jpg
Full Commons description, file history, embedded metadata and imageinfo read. Actual file is 1612×2359, credited to Knight Foundation under CC BY-SA 2.0, with a trusted Flickr licence review dated 20 May 2012. EXIF capture date is 10 March 2008; categorisation says 2012 and embedded original dimensions differ. No portrait date is asserted. Copyright status is unset in EXIF; no contrary reservation found. Main visual inspection confirmed the named subject in the full supplied original; original embedded metadata contains no conflicting image-rights reservation. Knight Foundation / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Complete supplied 1612 × 2359 frame retained; proportionally reduced to 1093 × 1600 WebP without additional cropping or enlargement. Source and output are fully opaque.
- 9. Knight Foundation / FlickrCatzie Vilayphonh: original photograph and CC BY-SA 2.0 licence
Original Flickr HTML read directly after browser fetch failed. Its asset title identifies Catzie Vilayphonh, owner is Knight Foundation, and both visible licence link and JSON-LD specify CC BY-SA 2.0. Licence-model listings for other Flickr options are not mistaken for this asset’s licence.
