Souvankham Thammavongsa

Souvankham Thammavongsa is a Canadian poet.

Life

Thammavongsa was born in the (Lao) Nong Khai refugee camp in Thailand in 1978. She and her parents were sponsored by a family in Canada when she was one year old.^[1] She was raised and educated in Toronto, Ontario.^[2]

Her first book, Small Arguments, won a ReLit Award in 2004.^[3] Her second book, Found, was made into a short film by Paramita Nath.^[4] Her third book, Light, won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry in 2014. ^[5] Her short story How to Pronounce Knife was shortlisted for the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize out of 4000 entries. ^[6]

Works

• Small Arguments (Pedlar Press, 2003)
• Found (Pedlar Press, 2007)
• Light (Pedlar Press, 2013)

External Links to Selected Interviews

• A short interview with Souvankham Thammavongsa by Rob McLennan
• Three Questions for Souvankham Thammavongsa by Phoebe Wang and E Martin Nolan (Town Crier)
• The Trillium Conversations: Adam Dickinson and Souvankham Thammavongsa, National Post
• Pretending I Don’t Write At All by Elena E. Johnson (EVENT Poetry and Prose)
• To be Self-Circling and Self-Enclosed: Pedlar Press in conversation with Souvankham Thammavongsa (Open Book Toronto)
• Two Interviews with Souvankham Thammavongsa, Thin Air Winnipeg
• An Interview with Souvankham Thammavongsa by Quentin Mills-Fenn, Contemporary Verse 2: The Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Writing
• Interview with Souvankham Thammavongsa by Shoshannah Ganz, Postcolonial Text

References