Da Ngan was born in 1952 in Can Tho, Vietnam, and served in the Southern Liberation Forces during the American War. She has written a number of novels and short story collections. An Insignificant Family won the prize for best fiction from the Union of Writers in Hanoi in 2005, and is Da Ngan's first novel in English to be published in the United States
Rosemary Nguyen’s work in literary translation includes an anthology of modern Vietnamese short stories, Literature News (Yale University Press), The Cemetery of Chua Village (Curbstone Press), and contributions to several other collections of short stories. She currently resides in Renton, Washington.