About the Directors
The Vang Brothers (Burlee & Abel Vang), a writing/directing duo. They are California born and bred, raised in the searing heat of Fresno, and are oldest children of Hmong political refugees from Laos. Despite their two-year difference, they are often mistaken as identical twins. Maybe their likeness has something to do with the two of them getting haircuts at the same barbershop, shopping at the same stores, and having held the same jobs at the same places for the last decade. On occasion, family members still confuse them with one another. Burlee is an award-winning author and poet. His books include The Dead I Know: Incantation for Rebirth (Swan Scythe Press, 2010) and How Do I Begin? A Hmong American Literary Anthology (Heyday, 2011). His writing has also appeared...read more
About the Directors
The Vang Brothers (Burlee & Abel Vang), a writing/directing duo. They are California born and bred, raised in the searing heat of Fresno, and are oldest children of Hmong political refugees from Laos. Despite their two-year difference, they are often mistaken as identical twins. Maybe their likeness has something to do with the two of them getting haircuts at the same barbershop, shopping at the same stores, and having held the same jobs at the same places for the last decade. On occasion, family members still confuse them with one another. Burlee is an award-winning author and poet. His books include The Dead I Know: Incantation for Rebirth (Swan Scythe Press, 2010) and How Do I Begin? A Hmong American Literary Anthology (Heyday, 2011). His writing has also appeared in many reputable literary journals and anthologies, including 20 Something Essays by 20 Something Writers: Best New Voices of 2006 (Random House, 2006) and New California Writing (Heyday, 2011). Abel worked on Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino as a voice actor, an assistant to casting, and as a 2nd Unit on the exclusive Blu-ray documentary Gran Torino: Next Door. He worked as a script consultant for Oscar-winner, Lynne Littman (Number our Days, 1976), on her screenplay adaptation of Anne Fadiman’s National Book Critics Circle Award Winner (1997), The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. In 2011, the brothers won the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science 2011 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting for their war-drama screenplay, The Tiger’s Child. Burlee holds in MFA in Fiction Writing from California State Universtiy, Fresno and a BA in English from the University of California, Davis. Abel holds an MFA in Cinema & Television Production from USC and a BS in Biology from California State University, Fresno.
