Sokunthary Svay is a Pushcart-nominated Khmer poet, writer and musician from the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

. She and her family were refugees from

Cambodia Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand t ...

who survived the genocidal

Khmer Rouge The Khmer Rouge (; ; km, ខ្មែរក្រហម, ; ) is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. ...

regime. As of 2016, Svay is the poetry editor for ''Newtown Literary'', and a founding member and Board President of the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association (CALAA). Svay was a subject in

New York magazine ''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker'', ...

’s “Living in a Sanctuary City” portfolio and featured in the New York Immigration Coalition's This is Our NY, broadcast in Times Square. She has been published in ''Women's Studies Quarterly'', ''Prairie Schooner'', ''LONTAR'', and ''

Mekong Review ''Mekong Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine on Southeast Asian literature, especially Cambodian literature, Burmese literature, Vietnamese literature, Laotian literature, and Thai literature. It was founded by Minh Bui Jo ...

'', ''Perigee'', and ''Margins''. She is a recipient of the American Opera Projects' Composer & the Voice Fellowship for 2017-2019. Her first poetry collection, Apsara in New York (Willow Books), was published in 2017 and had a debut at

Poets House Poets House is a national literary center and poetry library based in New York City. It contains more than 70,000 volumes of poetry, and is free and open to the public. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, they temporarily suspended operations in Nov ...

.Drake, Asa. "Wearing the Fabric of Another Country: Re-imagining Diaspora in Sokunthary Stay's Apsara in New York." The American Poetry Review, Jan.-Feb. 2018, p. 39. Svay is the author of the memoi
''Put It On Record: A Memoir-Archive'' (2023)

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American women writers American people of Cambodian descent Cambodian women writers 21st-century American women {{US-writer-stub