Biography
Monica Sok is a Cambodian American poet who grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the daughter of former refugees. Her 2020 debut collection, A Nail the Evening Hangs On, explores what she calls “a traumatic history I’ve inherited through familial silence.” Sok illuminates the experiences of Cambodian diaspora and reflects on America’s role in escalating the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s. “Weaving threads of her family’s stories, history, place, and identity,” wrote Publishers Weekly, “these poems glimmer with strength and presence.” Sok has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, and the Stadler Center for Poetry. She holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University and taught as a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland, California. Her poems appear in American Poetry Review, Paris Review, POETRY and Kenyon Review, among other publications.