About VietPhilly
VietPhilly.net is a Vietnamese American publishing imprint devoted to preserving stories of war and exile, love and family, spiritual reflection, and the quiet courage of everyday life.
Founded by Jim Huynh, a radioman in the former Republic of South Vietnam Navy. Although the memories had lived within him for decades, his desire to write became impossible to ignore after he became a grandfather in 2025. Writing under the pen name VietPhilly, he began turning a lifetime of memory, loss, endurance, faith, and affection into books and poems for future generations.
His work brings together poetry, memoir, cultural reflection, spiritual writing, and legacy books. Titles such as Beyond Saigon River, The Tale of Mother Vietnam, and Thăm Nuôi trace journeys across history and geography—from Vietnam to Philadelphia and beyond—while honoring those whose lives might otherwise remain unrecorded. Together, these works form a personal archive for the Vietnamese diaspora and an invitation to any reader who values truth told from the heart.
VietPhilly writes with a simple belief:
Every refugee’s life has a story.
Every refugee’s story deserves a voice.
Every refugee’s voice can light another soul.
VietPhilly also shares a growing collection of poems with Vietnamese and English-speaking readers. His subjects include memories of war, Zen-inspired and spiritual reflections, love, aging, intimacy, tenderness, vulnerability, and the humor of growing older with grace. He writes in both English and Vietnamese, choosing the language that best carries the feeling or thought he wishes to express.
Readers will recognize his gentle sense of humor—often directed at himself—alongside a willingness to speak honestly about experiences that are difficult, private, or too easily forgotten. At its heart, VietPhilly is a place where memories bloom into stories, and where one writer’s life becomes a bridge between generations, languages, and homelands.
"Suốt cuộc đời tha phương
Rồi cũng phải hồi hương
Như cá Hồi về nguồn
Chỉ để lại mớ xương."
