About Diep Tran

Credit: John Huu Nguyen

"Tell me about..."

That's my go-to question when I'm interviewing someone. One of the rules of journalism is never ask "yes or no" questions. Always give the interviewee room to explain, and to ramble. I find that the rambling usually makes for better quotes, since when people comfortable, their personality comes through better.

But see! Here I go talking about writing about other people when I'm supposed to be writing about myself. What to tell you about me...

The short version: I'm a journalist currently based in New York City. My beat is arts and entertainment reporting and I spend my days as the editorial assistant for "American Theatre" magazine, where I edit the "On Stage" and "Production Notebook" sections, write articles, and occasionally create and edit online multimedia content.

The long version: I'm a journalist currently based in New York City. But before that, I was just another Asian-American girl living in Southern California. I was born in Vietnam and, at the tiny age of 2, my family immigrated to the United States. Some of my earliest memories include me writing and drawing, mostly fantasy stories. As a little kid growing up in a poor household, your imagination is all you have and I didn't have many dolls.

Photo credit: XiaoYi Liu

Then at UCLA, I got my bachelors in English and Art History. That was also where I started writing as a journalist. I figured writing about other people might one day prepare me to write about myself. I'm still working on that park.

So I chose a beat, arts and entertainment. Writing about culture was what interested me the most. Then I traveled to Syracuse, NY to get a master's degree in arts journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. My mom did not know where Syracuse was, she only knew it was in the same state as New York City. "Do they even have an airport there?" she asked at the time.

After graduating in 2011, I moved to New York City. Now here I am, trying to figure out how to be a writer in a city where everyone is in the midst of figuring something out.

What I've done: Some places I've really enjoyed writing for is "Back Stage," "Time Out New York," the Syracuse "Post-Standard," the Charleston "Post and Courier" and "OC Weekly" in California. I have also created original video content for "The NewsHouse" at Syracuse University, the "Post-Standard," "Post and Courier" and "American Theatre."