About the Artist Award-winning writer/performer Lan Tran (pronounced "lon tran") has more library cards than credit cards, loves traveling to places where you're not supposed to drink the water, and knows how to jimmy a parking meter. Her work has been featured on NPR and presented at numerous off-Broadway theaters, New York City Hall, the Walt Disney Concert Hall's REDCAT Theater, the Ford Theatre, and universities across the country. Lan's first solo show, 'How to Unravel Your Family," played to a sold-out audience in the Lincoln Center Theater-sponsored American Living Room Festival. She has published fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry in literary journals and, most recently, "Lone Stars," a tale about her Vietnamese-Texan upbringing in Waking Up American (Seal Press, 2005) and Falling Backwards: Stories of Fathers and Daughters (Hourglass Books, 2004). She is a 2005 recipient of the PEN/Rosenthal Fellowship, was a finalist for the Heideman award, a recipient of the York Prize as well as residency fellowships from Hedgebrook, the Ragdale Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. The off-Broadway premiere of Lan's latest solo show "Elevator/Sex" at the West End Theatre was deemed "moving and provocative" by NY Arts Magazine. "Elevator/Sex" which emotionally links the experiences of 9/11 survivors with those who have been sexually abused, follows five individuals. What do a pickpocket, immigrant mother, professional hugger, surfer, and bridesmaid have in common? In relating their stories--at times horrific, at others oddly humorous--ultimately a message of hope is conveyed. Inspired by her own experiences living in New York during 9/11 and working with sexual abuse survivors, Lan wrote the show choosing not to focus on the traumas themselves but on their aftereffects. "Similar to how knee-jerk reactions to 9/11—the racism, religious persecution, and war-mongering—have perpetuated our wounds, so too can the trauma of sexual abuse persist in haunting its survivors. Unless we consciously choose otherwise, we continue reacting to and relating to others as if we are still being victimized—which is ultimately self-defeating," she says. "9/11 and sexual abuse were inflicted upon us but what happens afterwards we ourselves choose."