#57 Demystifying Memoir Writing with Putsata Reang

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August 25, 2023 • 29 mins

About Our Guest:
Putsata Reang is an author and journalist whose writings have appeared in a variety of national and international publications, including the New York Times, Politico, the Guardian, Ms, The Seattle Times and the San Jose Mercury News. She is the author of a recent memoir Ma and Me, which talks about her leaving Cambodia at 11 months old, and moving to rural Oregon, and how coming out—and marrying a woman in her 40s—broke her relationship with her Mother.

Putsata was born in Cambodia, and raised in rural Oregon, surrounded by berry farms where she and her family hustled to earn their middle class existence. Her memoir explores the glades of displacement felt by children of refugees, and the overlay of emotional exile that comes with being gay.

Putsata has lived and worked in more than a dozen countries, including Cambodia, Afghanistan and Thailand. She is an alum of Hedgebrook, Mineral School and Kimmel Harding Nelson residencies. She is a 2019 Jack Straw fellow. In 2005, she received an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship that took her back to Cambodia to report on landless farmers.

She currently teaches memoir writing at the University of Washington School of Professional & Continuing Education. Her book recently won a PNW book award.

Find Putsata Reang Online:
Website
MacMillan Author Page
Amazon Author Page
Twitter

Find out more about this episode's guest host, Professor Peter Laufer.