Monica Sok

Last updated

Monica Sok is a Cambodian American poet and professor. In 2015, she published Year Zero, a poetry chapbook selected by Marilyn Chin for the 2015 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, and in 2020, she released the poetry collection A Nail the Evening Hangs On with Copper Canyon Press. Themes of her work include myth-making, Cambodian history, intergenerational trauma, and family history.

Contents

Early life

Sok is the daughter of Cambodian refugees who escaped from Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. [1] She grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. [2] Her family includes many Theravada Buddhists. [3] Sok's grandmother, Em Bun, was a Cambodian American weaver who was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in 1990. [4]

During her time at American University, Sok became interested in rhyming and attended open mic events near campus. [5] She then graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and considered becoming a foreign service officer. [6]

After graduating, Sok attended creative writing workshops and also briefly observed a class taught by Yusef Komunyakaa at New York University. [5] Encouraged by her poetry professor, David Keplinger, she applied for and enrolled in an MFA in Creative Writing program there. [6]

Career

Sok's poems have been published in The Washington Post , Poets.org , New England Review , Paris Review , Virginia Quarterly Review , Narrative Magazine , and more. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] She has also been interviewed by Electric Literature , LitHub , The Normal School , and other outlets. [13] [14] [15]

As a graduate student, Sok attended the Kundiman Retreat and became a Kundiman Fellow, which helped her write about Cambodian history and, in particular, the Cambodian genocide. [6] Later, in 2015, Sok published won the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship with her chapbook, Year Zero, which was selected by Marilyn Chin. 500 copies were printed. [16]

From 2016 to 2018, Sok was the Stradler Fellow in Poetry at Bucknell University. [17] In 2016, Sok attended the Hedgebrook residency for women writers. [18] In 2017, she received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. [4] In 2018, Sok won the 92Y Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Contest, alongside Paul Tran, for her poem titled "ABC for Refugees", which was originally published in Poetry. [19] The same year, she attended the Montalvo Arts Center as a Literary Fellow at the Lucas Arts Program. [20]

From 2018 to 2020, Sok was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. In 2020, she released her debut poetry collection, A Nail the Evening Hangs On. The same year, she became a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University and occasionally taught classes on Asian American literature. She has also taught Southeast Asian youth at the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland, California where she is based. [21]

In 2022, Sok attended MacDowell and worked on a second poetry collection, as well as a screenplay. [22] From 2023–2024, she was selected to be the Soniat Reader in poetry for the Virginia Tech MFA in Creative Writing. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cilla McQueen</span> New Zealand poet (born 1949)

Priscilla Muriel McQueen is a New Zealand poet and three-time winner of the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aimee Nezhukumatathil</span> American poet

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is an American poet and essayist. She currently serves as poetry editor of Sierra Magazine and as professor of English in the University of Mississippi's MFA program, where she previously was the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence in 2016-17. She has also taught at the Kundiman Retreat for Asian American writers. Nezhukumatathil draws upon her Filipina and Malayali Indian background to give her perspective on love, loss, and land. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with her husband, Dustin Parsons, and their two sons.

Mary Szybist is an American poet. She won the National Book Award for Poetry for her collection Incarnadine.

Debora Greger is an American poet as well as a visual artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luisa Igloria</span> American poet

Luisa A. Igloria is a Filipina American poet and author of various award-winning collections, and is the most recent Poet Laureate of Virginia (2020-2022).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen An-hwei Lee</span> American poet (born 1973)

Karen An-hwei Lee is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Gambito</span> American poet and professor

Sarah Gambito is an American poet and professor. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Loves You, Delivered, and Matadora. Her first collection, Matadora, was a New England/New York Award winner and won the 2005 Global Filipino Literary Award for Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesse Lee Kercheval</span> American poet (born 1956)

Jesse Lee Kercheval is an American poet, memoirist, translator, fiction writer and visual artist. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of numerous books, notably Building Fiction, The Museum of Happiness, Space and Underground Women, and she is a translator of Uruguayan poetry.

Joy Katz is an American poet who was awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beth Ann Fennelly</span> American poet and writer

Beth Ann Fennelly is an American poet and prose writer and was the Poet Laureate of Mississippi.

Sandra Lim is a Korean American poet and professor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Chang</span> American poet and scholar

Jennifer Chang is an Asian American poet and scholar.

Maureen Therese Seaton was an American lesbian poet, memoirist, and professor of creative writing. She authored fifteen solo books of poetry, co-authored an additional thirteen, and wrote one memoir, Sex Talks to Girls, which won the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. Seaton's writing has been described as "unusual, compressed, and surrealistic," and was frequently created in collaboration with fellow poets such as Denise Duhamel, Samuel Ace, Neil de la Flor, David Trinidad, Kristine Snodgrass, cin salach, Niki Nolin, and Mia Leonin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janine Joseph</span> Filipina-American poet and author

Janine Joseph is a Filipino-American poet and author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Olzmann</span> American poet

Matthew Olzmann is a poet, author, and essayist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aria Aber</span> American poet (born 1991)

Aria Aber is an American poet and writer based in Los Angeles, California.

Esther Phillips is a Barbadian poet. She became the first poet laureate of Barbados in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kimberly Nguyen</span> American poet

In this article, the surname is Nguyễn but is often simplified to Nguyen in English-language text.

Amaryllis Chanda Feldman is an American poet. She is an assistant professor of creative writing and chair of the creative writing program at Oberlin College, where she has taught since 2017. Feldman was born in Tennessee in 1976. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English language and literature from the University of Chicago (1999), as well as a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from Cornell University (2003). She also held a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University from 2008 to 2010, as well as a MacDowell Fellowship in 2009, and National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship in 2011. Feldman has been noted in Callaloo as an example of Black people in poetry at American colleges and universities, alongside other Black poets.

Shelley Wong is an American poet. In 2022, she released her debut poetry collection, As She Appears, after winning the YesYes Books Pamet River Prize in 2019, and her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, the New England Review, and other publications. Her poetry has been supported by the Vermont Studio Center, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Fire Island Artist Residency, the San Francisco Arts Commission, among others.

References

  1. ↑ Denenberg, Risa (2020-10-21). "Issue Thirty-Five: A Conversation with Monica Sok - The Adroit Journal" . Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  2. ↑ "Interview With Author & Poet Monica Sok". Death in Cambodia, Life in America Podcast. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  3. ↑ "Monica Sok". New England Review. 2024-09-11. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  4. 1 2 Sok, Monica. "The Weaver in My Poems". www.arts.gov. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  5. 1 2 3 King, Leslie (September 29, 2023). "Illuminating verses: A conversation with poet Monica Sok". news.vt.edu. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  6. 1 2 3 Wong, Ellie (2020-11-04). "'It started with joy': Monica Sok talks poetry, embracing heritage in art creation" . Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  7. ↑ Gonzalez, Elisa (April 14, 2023). "Six poems that celebrate magic acts of living". The Washington Post .
  8. ↑ Sok, Monica. "Ode to the Boy Who Jumped Me". Poets.org. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  9. ↑ Sok, Monica (2024-06-17). "Evacuation". New England Review. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  10. ↑ Sok, Monica. "Long Life". The Paris Review .
  11. ↑ Sok, Monica. "Factory". www.vqronline.org. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  12. ↑ Sok, Monica (2017-03-02). "Lancaster General Hospital and Other Poems". www.narrativemagazine.com. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  13. ↑ Lou, Jo (2019-06-11). "The Cambodian American Writers Who Are Reimagining Cambodian Literature". Electric Literature. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  14. ↑ Elliott, Louis (2020-04-30). "Monica Sok on Writing the Cambodian Story Beyond Trauma". Literary Hub. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  15. ↑ Mariah Bosch (2021-02-10). "A Normal Interview with Monica Sok". The Normal School. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  16. ↑ "Year Zero by Monica Sok". Poetry Society of America. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  17. ↑ Wang, Frances Kai-Hwa (2017-05-26). "'Groundbreaking' Asian-American poets to read with immigrant, refugee roots". NBC News. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  18. ↑ Sok, Monica (2020-11-02). "Sunisa Manning: Flexibility is Subversive". Guernica. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  19. ↑ "Monica Sok and Paul Tran are named Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Contest Winners!". Kundiman. 2018-04-10. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  20. ↑ "Monica Sok • Montalvo Arts Center". Montalvo Arts Center. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  21. ↑ "HOME Reading and Open Mic: Monica Sok". Poets.org. 2021-03-05. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  22. ↑ "Monica Sok - MacDowell Fellow in Literature". MacDowell. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.