Creator

Monica Sok

Cambodian American poet whose work addresses the Khmer Rouge period and its inheritance.

Monica Sok is a Cambodian American poet and teacher, the author of A Nail the Evening Hangs On (Copper Canyon Press, 2020).[1][2] Her poems move through Cambodian history, the Khmer Rouge genocide and what it has left to later generations.[3] She lives in New York City.[4][5]

Education and teaching

Sok earned a BA in international studies from American University and an MFA in creative writing from New York University, where she studied with Sharon Olds and Yusef Komunyakaa.[1][6][3] Between her first and second years at New York University she attended the Kundiman Retreat, and she credits Kundiman with helping her commit to writing about Cambodian history and her own experience.[7]

From 2016 to 2018 she was the Stadler Fellow in Poetry at Bucknell University and associate poetry editor of West Branch.[8] She held Stanford University's Wallace Stegner Fellowship from 2018 to 2020, then became a Jones Lecturer at Stanford, where she taught Asian American literature and an anti-war poetry tutorial.[1][9][3] She has also taught at Barnard College and Columbia University.[6][4] In Oakland she taught poetry to Southeast Asian youth at the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants.[9][10] Students in the Virginia Tech MFA in Creative Writing chose her as the Soniat Reader for 2023 to 2024.[11]

Poetry

Her chapbook Year Zero was selected by Marilyn Chin for a 2015 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and was printed in an edition of 500 copies.[1][8] The Poetry Foundation gives 2016 as its publication year.[2] Some of its poems went into A Nail the Evening Hangs On.[3]

A Nail the Evening Hangs On was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 shutdown, and her book tour was canceled.[3] The collection looks at the Cambodian refugee diaspora and at the role of the United States in the genocide of Cambodian people.[9][12] Its poems include "Here Is Your Name," "The Death of Pol Pot," "Tuol Sleng" and "The Death of Henry Kissinger," which reworks Kissinger's language about the bombing of Cambodia.[3] "Tuol Sleng" follows the site's lives as a school, a torture prison and a museum.[9] Publishers Weekly praised the way her poems weave together family stories, history, place and identity.[12] Another poem from the book, "Self-Portrait in Siem Reap," is published on Poetry in Voice.[13]

Sok's poems have appeared in The Washington Post, Poets.org, New England Review, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Narrative Magazine, American Poetry Review, POETRY, Kenyon Review and New Republic.[1][6] In 2018 she was one of four winners of the Discovery Poetry Contest, with Heidi Poon, Jake Skeets and Paul Tran.[14] In 2022 she was at MacDowell, working on a second poetry collection and a screenplay.[15]

Community

In March 2019 Sok read with Angela So, Sokunthary Svay, Danny Thanh Nguyen and Anthony Veasna So at "How to (Not) Write About Genocide?" in Portland, Oregon, the first panel of Cambodian American writers at an AWP Conference. Writing about the event, she argued that Cambodian American identity reaches beyond trauma and the expectation of resilience.[16] She has taken part in direct-action protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including at San Francisco's ICE detention center.[3]

Recognition

  • Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship (2015), for Year Zero[6][15]
  • Hedgebrook residency[6][17]
  • Stadler Fellow in Poetry, Bucknell University (2016 to 2018)[8]
  • National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2017)[6]
  • 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize (2018)[6]
  • Literary Fellow, Lucas Artists Program, Montalvo Arts Center (2018)[18]
  • Wallace Stegner Fellowship, Stanford University (2018 to 2020)[17]
  • Fellowships or residencies from Kundiman, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, MacDowell and the Saltonstall Foundation[6][9]

Works


See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Monica Sok, Wikipedia
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Poetry Foundation, Monica Sok
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 The Poetry Project, Language As Rebirth
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Barnard College, Monica Sok, Assistant Professor, English (undated)
  5. ↑ Academy of American Poets, About Monica Sok (undated)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 Monica Sok official site
  7. ↑ The Stanford Daily, Ellie Wong, 'It started with joy': Monica Sok talks poetry, embracing heritage in art creation (November 4, 2020)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Virginia Quarterly Review, Monica Sok
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 The Adroit Journal, Issue Thirty-Five: A Conversation with Monica Sok (October 21, 2020)
  10. ↑ The Poetry Project, Monica Sok
  11. ↑ Virginia Tech News, Leslie King, Illuminating verses: A conversation with poet Monica Sok (September 29, 2023)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Poetry in Voice, Monica Sok
  13. ↑ Poetry in Voice, Self-Portrait in Siem Reap
  14. ↑ Boston Review, 2018 Discovery Poetry Contest Winners (May 3, 2018)
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 MacDowell, Monica Sok (undated)
  16. ↑ Electric Literature, The Cambodian American Writers Who Are Reimagining What It Means to Be Cambodian (June 11, 2019)
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Copper Canyon Press, Monica Sok (undated)
  18. ↑ Montalvo Arts Center, Monica Sok, Lucas Artists Fellow (undated)
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This page was last edited on 9 October 2026, at 06:07.