Creator
Sokunthary Svay
Khmer American poet, librettist and scholar who co-founded the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association.
Sokunthary Svay is a Khmer American poet, librettist and scholar from the Bronx who helped found the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association.[1][2] She has published a poetry collection and a memoir, and she has written the librettos for two operas with the composer Liliya Ugay.[1][3]
Career
Svay is a writer, poet and musician, and her practice also takes in scholarship, public speaking and performance.[1][4] As of 2016, she was poetry editor for Newtown Literary and led the board of the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association.[5] Her PhD in English is from the CUNY Graduate Center. She teaches English at Queens College and at City College in Harlem.[1][2] She has held fellowships from CUNY, Willow Books, Poets House and the American Opera Project. Her commissions have come from ISSUE Project Room, White Snake Project, the Chautauqua Institution, the Asian American Writers' Workshop and Washington National Opera.[1][6]
New York magazine included her in its portfolio "Living in a Sanctuary City". Her work also appeared in This is Our NY, a New York Immigration Coalition project shown in Times Square.[4] In March 2019 she read at "How to (Not) Write About Genocide" in Portland, Oregon, with Anthony Veasna So, Angela So and Danny Thanh Nguyen. The event was the first AWP Conference panel of Cambodian American writers. She has said that she wants to write her own story rather than another survival memoir of the genocide.[7]
Writing
Her first poetry collection, Apsara in New York, was published by Willow Books in 2017 and debuted at Poets House.[2][5] Put It On Record: A Memoir-Archive, her memoir, came out in 2023.[3] Her poem "I am the Apsara's daughter" dates from 2021.[2]
Her writing has appeared in Women's Studies Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, LONTAR, Mekong Review, Perigee and Margins.[4][8] Her other credits include the anthology Homelands, FLESH and Blue Lyra Review, and her work has been published in Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, London and Australia.[4] It has also appeared in anthologies and has been performed by actors and singers.[1]
Opera
Svay held the Composer & the Voice Fellowship from American Opera Projects, dated 2017 to 2018 in one listing and 2017 to 2019 in another. The fellowship gave her experience writing for voice and the opera stage with Liliya Ugay.[4][7] Her first opera, Woman of Letters, with music by Ugay, had its world premiere in January 2020 at the Kennedy Center, under the American Opera Initiative.[1] She received an OPERA America IDEA grant. Chhlong Tonle, her second opera with Ugay, premiered in March 2022.[1][9]
Recognition
- Pushcart Prize nomination[4]
- Composer & the Voice Fellowship, American Opera Projects (2017 to 2019)[7]
- OPERA America IDEA grant[1]
- Willow Arts Alliance Residency Fellow[4]
- First Friday Residency, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning[4]
Works
- Apsara in New York (Book)
See also
- Apsara in New York
- Cambodian American Literary Arts Association
- Anthony Veasna So
- Bunkong Tuon
- All creators
References 9
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Sokunthary Svay, About
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Academy of American Poets, Sokunthary Svay
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 California State University Long Beach, Song of the Archive: Remembrances with Sokunthary Svay (April 24, 2025)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 AbeBooks, Apsara in New York, author note (2017)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 A Room of Her Own Foundation, "No Radio" by Sokunthary Svay, author note (undated)
- ↑ Asian American Writers' Workshop, Sokunthary Svay (May 21, 2020)
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Electric Literature, The Cambodian American Writers Who Are Reimagining ... (June 11, 2019)
- ↑ Sokunthary Svay, Interwebs (undated)
- ↑ Asia Society, The Evolution of Arts in Cambodia (April 19, 2023)
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