Creator
Bunkong Tuon
Cambodian American poet and novelist who teaches English at Union College.
Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian American poet, novelist and critic who teaches English at Union College in Schenectady, New York.[1][2] He writes about the Cambodian genocide and its impact on Cambodian Americans, and he won a Pushcart Prize in 2024.[3][4]
Life and career
Tuon left Cambodia in 1979 and lived for years in refugee camps in Thailand. He came to Massachusetts and later moved to California, where he learned to read and write in English and went to college.[5] He holds a bachelor's degree from California State University at Long Beach and master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.[1][6]
He is a professor of English at Union College. His research covers contemporary ethnic literature, Asian American studies, Southeast Asian American literature and history, trauma studies, testimonial discourse, creative writing, translation and folklore.[1] His peer-reviewed scholarship has appeared in MELUS, Comparative Literature Studies, Mosaic, Pedagogy, Postcolonial Text and Culture and Poetics.[1] From July 2020 to August 2023 he ran "Poets on Craft," a weekly interview series with two poets in Cultural Weekly that reached 82 posts. He has been poetry editor of Cultural Daily since 2023.[1][3] In 2024 he published "A New Asian American Boom: A Reading List of the Cambodian American Experience" in LitHub.[1]
Writing
His first poetry collection, Gruel, came out from NYQ Books in 2015. He calls it "an autobiography in verse."[3][5] NYQ Books published And So I Was Blessed in 2017, and Shabda Press published The Doctor Will Fix It in 2019.[3] Dead Tongue, a chapbook written with Joanna C. Valente, came out from Yes Poetry in 2020.[3][4] What Is Left (Jacar Press, 2024) is a 28-page chapbook that follows his journey as a child refugee of the Khmer Rouge.[3][4] His debut novel, Koan Khmer, was published by Curbstone and Northwestern University Press in 2024.[3][7]
His poems deal with the Khmer Rouge years, survival and rebuilding a life.[4] "A Hole in My Stomach," published in the Ocean State Review in 2024, reflects on grief tied to the Cambodian genocide. Tuon has said that writing can help survivors recover from trauma, but that for him healing and closure are not possible.[8] Other poems include "Under the Tamarind Tree," "Moon in Khmer," "Letter to My Unborn Son" and "Wanting Kids," which was runner-up for the Shō Poetry Prize and was reprinted in Verse Daily.[5][9][1] "Eating Donuts with My Son at Dunkin'," written after Kevin Prufer, appeared in Collateral in 2025.[10]
His work has appeared in World Literature Today, Michigan Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, New York Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Salamander and The American Journal of Poetry, among others.[3] It is included in the anthologies With Our Eyes Wide Open (2014), Modern Literature of Cambodia (2016), Two-Countries: U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents (2017) and Out of the Shadows of Angkor: Cambodian Poetry, Prose, and Performance Through the Ages, published by the University of Hawaiʻi Press in 2022.[1] Writer Chanrithy Him has praised the way he tells stories visually and vividly.[2]
Recognition
- Pushcart Prize, for the poem "What Is Left," first published in Copper Nickel (2024)[1][4]
- Stillman Prize for Faculty Excellence in Research, Union College (2025)[1]
- Nasiona Nonfiction Poetry Prize; finalist, Naugatuck River Review Prize; nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net[5]
Works
- Gruel (Book)
- Koan Khmer (Book)
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 Union College, Bunkong Tuon, English faculty page (2026)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Bunkong Tuon, official website
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Bunkong Tuon, About me
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 As It Ought To Be Magazine, Bunkong Tuon
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Poetry in Voice, Bunkong Tuon
- ↑ Bunkong Tuon, Wikipedia
- ↑ Northwestern University Press, Koan Khmer
- ↑ The Ocean State Review, Bunkong Tuon featured in the new Ocean State Review (August 8, 2024)
- ↑ Shō Poetry Journal, Audio feature: Bunkong Tuon (Shō No. 3)
- ↑ Collateral Journal, Poetry by Bunkong Tuon (2025)