Nguyễn Quí Đức, who hosted KQED’s weekly radio program Pacific Time from 2000 to 2006, died in late November. He was 65 years old, and had been living in Hanoi, Vietnam since leaving the Bay Area in late 2006.
Nguyễn was born in South Vietnam. His memoir, Where The Ashes Are, describes growing up during the American war, coming to the U.S. as a teenage refugee without his parents and their eventual reunion in San Francisco after his father was released from a prison camp.
Nguyễn graduated from San Francisco State University’s journalism program and worked as a host and program director at KALW. He was a frequent commentator and NPR contributor. He received an award from the Overseas Press Club for stories he filed for the network when he first revisited Vietnam in 1989. In addition to journalism, Nguyễn wrote and translated poetry, plays, short stories and essays; created visual art, photography and sculpture; and worked as a community organizer and in advertising.
His longtime friend Tom Lockard wrote, “He was a committed social servant to the Vietnamese community, arriving in San Francisco in the early 1980s. Rather than affiliate with a religious organization doing resettlement, he and his entrepreneurial Vietnamese partners built a self-help network that persists to this day.”
Nguyễn came to KQED in the summer of 2000 to co-create Pacific Time, a half-hour weekly radio program that was distributed nationally by Public Radio International. It sought to bridge the Pacific — connecting news, current affairs and arts in East Asia with that of Asian-Americans. KQED listeners will remember Nguyễn’s elegant, compelling presence and voice, which San Francisco Chronicle reporter Heidi Benson described as “an urbane baritone with inflections of French, Vietnamese, British English.”
At KQED and throughout his life in the U.S., Nguyễn advocated for Asian-American communities and mentored young journalists and creatives. Among those who worked or interned with Pacific Time are KQED Forum host Mina Kim, novelist and former San Francisco Chronicle reporter Vanessa Hua and managing editor of Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program Bernice Yeung.
In 2006, Nguyễn decided to move back to Vietnam to provide better care for his widowed mother, who was suffering from dementia and could no longer communicate with English-speaking caregivers. He opened a restaurant, bar and gallery space in Hanoi called Tadioto, which became wildly popular among Vietnamese artists and writers as well as expats. The New York Times described it as “a mellow version of Rick’s Café Americain in the movie Casablanca, without its hard edge of hustle and intrigue.”
Nguyễn Quí Đức died in a Hanoi hospital on Nov. 22, 2023 from complications of an aggressive cancer discovered just a few months before. Bay Area friends are organizing a gathering of remembrance at KQED in January, which will be recorded for later broadcast.