Song of the Archive: Remembrances with Sokunthary Svay
Comparative World Literature and Asian and Asian American Studies invite all to come to the Anatol Center on Thursday, May 1, from 3:30-5:00 pm for a special event with artist and author Sokunthary Svay in marking the 50th anniversary of the Cambodian genocide: "Song of the Archive: Remembrances with Sokunthary Svay." Svay will speak about her own memoir-archive, bringing together family and diasporic narratives, sonic nostalgia, and "Champa Battambang."
is a Cambodian scholar and writer from the Bronx, New York. A founding member of the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association (CALAA), she has received fellowships from the American Opera Project, Poets House, Willow Books, and CUNY, as well as commissions from the Washington National Opera, Cambodian Living Arts, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, the Chautauqua Institution, and ISSUE Project Room. In addition to publishing a memoir, Put It On Record: A Memoir-Archive (2023) and a poetry collection, Apsara in New York (2017), Svay's first opera, Woman of Letters, set by composer Liliya Ugay, received its world premier at the Kennedy Center in 2020 as part of the American Opera Initiative. A recent recipient of the OPERA America IDEA grant, her second opera with Ugay, Chhlong Tonle, premiered in March 2022. Svay teaches composition and literature at City College in Harlem.
