Biography
Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian American poet, writer and critic. He left his homeland in 1979 with his extended family, living for years in refugee camps in Thailand. Tuon then immigrated to Massachusetts, and later moved to California, where he learned to read and write in English and attended college. Tuon is the author of Gruel, which he calls “an autobiography in verse,” as well as So I Was Blessed, The Doctor Will Fix It, and Dead Tongue. His heart-breaking personal poems—such as “Under the Tamarind Tree,” about losing both his mother, worked to death by the Khmer Rouge regime, and his country—explore suffering, recovery, and family. Tuon’s work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net. He was a finalist for the Naugatuck River Review Prize and winner of the Nasiona Nonfiction Poetry Prize, and teaches at Union College, in Schenectady, NY., where he lives with his family.