Creator

Anthony Veasna So

Cambodian American fiction writer and essayist whose work portrays Khmer American life in California's Central Valley.

Anthony Veasna So was a Cambodian American writer from Stockton, California, whose story collection Afterparties was published in 2021.[1][2] His fiction follows Cambodian American families in California's Central Valley, and it carries the trauma of the genocide with humor. He died in San Francisco on December 8, 2020, at age 28, before the book appeared.[3][4]

Life and career

So grew up in Stockton and finished high school as salutatorian.[3] At Stanford University he first studied computer science, then switched to art and English literature, and he graduated in 2014.[4][1] While at Stanford he hosted a comedy open-mic night and helped publish several graphic novels, and in the summer of 2013 he performed stand-up comedy in Los Angeles and New York City.[2][5] He also made comics, paintings, photographs and print transfers, often working in collage.[5][3][6]

So was a prose editor at The Adroit Journal from 2015 to 2019.[7] He taught literature and writing at Colgate University, Syracuse University, the Urban School of San Francisco and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland, California, and he also taught through Next Generation Scholars and Catapult.[1][4][8] Syracuse University accepted him into its MFA program in February 2017, and a 2018 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship supported his MFA in fiction there.[5][9] He worked with Jonathan Dee and Dana Spiotta and received the degree in December 2020.[1]

In 2019 So read at "How to (Not) Write About Genocide" in Portland, Oregon, with Angela So, Sokunthary Svay and Danny Thanh Nguyen. It was the first panel of Cambodian American writers at an AWP Conference.[10] Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, won a bidding war for a two-book deal: Afterparties and a novel.[5][1] Ecco announced his death.[11]

Writing

So called himself "a queer Khmer-American son of former refugees, a failed computer scientist, a parody of the model minority, and a Stanford graduate."[11] He said Cambodia was an underlying source of energy in his stories, and that he often wrote from the view of younger people cut off from parts of Cambodian culture.[12] He said his writing and visual art aimed to preserve history and imagine new futures for his people.[9] He wrote slowly and revised heavily. He worked on "Three Women of Chuck's Donuts" for six years.[5]

His fiction appeared in The New Yorker, n+1, Granta, Zyzzyva and Ninth Letter, and his comics in Hobart and Nashville Review.[4][2] "Superking Son Scores Again," his first finished story at Syracuse, appeared in n+1. It runs about 8,000 words and deals with badminton, Cambodian American life and inherited trauma.[9] It won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize in Fiction.[3] n+1 also published his story about chain-smoking Buddhist monks and an essay on watching Crazy Rich Asians.[9] "Three Women of Chuck's Donuts" appeared in The New Yorker in February 2020. In it, a Cambodian immigrant named Sothy and her two daughters run a doughnut shop during the 2008 to 2009 financial crisis.[11][5]

Afterparties was published by Ecco on August 3, 2021.[1] Its nine linked stories follow Cambodian Americans in California's Central Valley through doughnut shops, auto garages, suburban Buddhist temples and Khmer New Year celebrations.[3][6][5] It became a New York Times bestseller, and a television adaptation was announced in January 2022.[6][1] At his death So was writing a novel, Straight Thru Cambotown, about three Khmer American cousins: a pansexual rapper, a comedian-philosopher and a hot-tempered illustrator.[3][2] Songs on Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes, published on December 5, 2023, gathers his nonfiction and parts of that unfinished novel.[13]

Recognition

  • Joyce Carol Oates Award in Fiction[4]
  • Lambda Literary Fellowship[4]
  • Kundiman Fellow; Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow (2018)[1][9]
  • Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ literature, for Afterparties (2022)[1]
  • Shortlist, Andrew Carnegie Medal, for Afterparties[6]

The literary magazine n+1 created the $5,000 Anthony Veasna So Fiction Prize in his honor.[3]

Works


See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Anthony Veasna So, Wikipedia
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Los Angeles Times, Emerging writer Anthony Veasna So died Dec. 8 at 28 (December 15, 2020)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Los Angeles Times, Before rising literary star Anthony Veasna So died, he immortalized Cambodian California (August 1, 2021)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Stanford Magazine, Breakout literary voice mined the Cambodian American experience (April 20, 2021)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Poets & Writers, First Fiction: Anthony Veasna So
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Cambodgemag, Cambodia & Diaspora: Anthony Veasna So, "He did not live long enough to see his success" (June 16, 2026)
  7. ↑ The Adroit Journal, Issue Thirty-Six: Remembering Anthony Veasna So (January 26, 2021)
  8. ↑ Los Angeles Times, Emerging writer Anthony Veasna So died Dec. 8 at 28 (2020)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, Anthony Veasna So in his own words (December 16, 2020)
  10. ↑ Electric Literature, The Cambodian American writers who are reimagining what it means to be Cambodian (June 11, 2019)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 WCIV, Anthony Veasna So, acclaimed fiction writer, dead at age 28 (December 10, 2020)
  12. ↑ The Adroit Journal, Remembering Anthony Veasna So
  13. ↑ Wikimedia Foundation, Anthony Veasna So, Wikipedia (2020)
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:31.