Anthony Veasna So, acclaimed fiction writer, dead at age 28
By HILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer
December 10, 2020 05:33 PM

This cover image released by Ecco shows "Afterparties" by Anthony Veasna So. (Ecco via AP) AP
NEW YORK

The author of a highly anticipated debut story collection has died. Anthony Veasna So was 28. His death was announced Thursday by his publisher, Ecco, which did not immediately provide additional details.

A native of Stockton, California, who had settled in San Francisco, So once described himself as a “queer boy, a Khmer-American son of former refugees, a failed computer scientist, a grotesque parody of the model minority, and a graduate of Stanford University.” In “Afterparties," to be published in August, he drew upon the tragedies his family endured in Cambodia during the rule of the Khmer Rouge and his own struggles with sexual and cultural identity.

“'Afterparties' was one of the first books I acquired for Ecco, and everything about Anthony’s exuberant writing felt new to me — its blazing wit, crackling energy, deep empathy,” So's editor, Helen Atsma, tweeted Thursday.

Publishers Weekly reported earlier this year that So had agreed to a two-book, six-figure deal with Ecco, which prevailed over several other interested publishers. George Saunders, Bryan Washington and Mary Karr are among those who have praised him.

“The mind-frying hilarity of Anthony Veasna So’s first book of fiction settles him as the genius of social satire our age needs now more than ever," Karr wrote in a blurb for the book. “Few writers can handle firm plot action and wrenching pathos in such elegant prose. This unforgettable new voice is at once poetic and laugh-out-loud funny.”

The story “Three Women of Chuck's Donuts,” which ran in The New Yorker in February, is set during a late summer night in a family-run business where the neighborhood has been devastated by the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The store is not named for an actual person; the owner, a Cambodian immigrant named Sothy, thought an American name would bring in more customers. Sothy works alongside her two daughters, all of them coping with the lack of business and the knowledge that Sothy's former husband now has a second family.

“Even with the recession wiping out almost every downtown business, and driving away their nighttime customers, save for the odd worn-out worker from the nearby hospital, consider these summer nights, endless under the fluorescent lights, the family’s last pillars of support,” So wrote. “Imagine Chuck’s Donuts a mausoleum to their glorious past.”

So taught at several schools, including Syracuse University and Colgate University and the Oakland-based Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants.

So is survived by his partner, Alex Torres; his parents, Sienghay So and Ravy So; his sister and brother-in-law, Samantha Lamb and Zachary Lamb, and his nephew, Oliver Lamb. According to Ecco, he had been working on a novel, “about three Khmer-American cousins — a pansexual rapper, a comedian philosopher, and a hot-headed illustrator.”

Read more here: https://www.fresnobee.com/entertainment ... rylink=cpy

Grove Press to publish late writer Anthony Veasna So
Published December 18, 2020 by Ruth Comerford

Grove Press is publishing the debut short story collection of Anthony Veasna So, the Cambodian-American fiction writer and promising talent who died aged 28 earlier this month.

Publisher Peter Blackstock acquired UK Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights in Afterparties from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein, on behalf of Rob McQuilkin at Massie & McQuilkin. It will be published in hardback and e-book in August 2021. US rights were previously acquired by Helen Atsma at Ecco.

A month after the acquisition was made, So (pictured) died at the age of 28, on 8th December 2020. In an obituary, the New York Times described him as "the author of crackling, kinetic and darkly comedic stories that made vivid the lives of first-generation Khmer-Americans." His death was announced by Ecco, the imprint of HarperCollins in the US that had won his work at auction, but no additional details were provided; his partner said it was "sudden and unexpected".

Afterparties is a collection of stories that paint a portrait of the lives of Cambodian-Americans, predominantly children of refugees in California who shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide. The publisher's synopsis states: "In these intoxicating, and both hilarious and poignant stories, Anthony Veasna So navigates the intimacy of queer and immigrant communities in the US, and explores questions of immigration, family, race and sexuality."

Born and raised in Stockton, California, the author lived in San Francisco and was a graduate of Stanford University. He earned his MFA in Fiction at Syracuse University, and his writing appeared in publications including the New Yorker, n+1, Granta and ZYZZYVA.

"I was devastated to hear about Anthony’s death," said Blackstock, who had known So since 2018. "A month ago, I was thrilled to be able to be in touch with Anthony again as his UK publisher. I know that readers outside North America will love the humour and swagger and emotion in these unforgettable stories, and I feel privileged to be Anthony’s champion in the UK, even in these extremely sad circumstances. The whole Grove UK team and I are so looking forward to helping bring Afterparties to the broadest audience possible."
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/grov ... es-1231015

More on Anthony Veasna So and his writing:

NPR > Book Reviews
Philosophical, Queer, Angry, Romantic, Defiant: 'Afterparties' Contains Multitudes
By Thúy Đinh
Tuesday, August 3, 2021 • 7:00 AM EDT

Anthony Veasna So's debut story collection Afterparties contains multitudes, embodying both the author's Cambodian American heritage and his life-affirming worldview. The title alludes to the aftermath of war, the 1975 Khmer Rouge genocide — but also the idea of getting down with friends and family for a real celebration after some stuffy social event.

So died unexpectedly in December of 2020, but has left us with an indelible posse of "Cambos" from his hometown of Stockton, California. His people are philosophical, queer, angry, bossy, romantic, unfaithful, filial, and defiant survivors who consider the genocide "to be the source of all [their] problems and none of them."

Trained as a comic, So creates deadpan and intricate vignettes about the Cambodian American community that the uninitiated may find startling. His stories take place at family-owned businesses like an all-night donut shop ("Three Women of Chuck's Donuts"), a near-bankrupt car repair shop ("The Shop"), an AC-challenged Khmer grocery store reeking of pig blood "all jellied, cubed, and stored in buckets before [turning up in] everyone's noodle soup on Sunday mornings" ("Superking Son Scores Again"); or at communal events such as a joint birthday-reincarnation blowout ("Maly, Maly, Maly"), a clan wedding with a "butt-grabbing game of matrimony" ("We Would've Been Princes"), a sickbed vigil at a nursing home that turns into a time traveling ghost story ("Somaly Serey, Serey Somaly"), and a Buddhist retreat for youth that features a cross-eyed and muscular Buddha statue "look[ing] like a dumb jock" ("The Monks").
Related Story: A Young Literary Star Makes His Posthumous Debut With 'Afterparties' Related Story: 'Afterparties' Is A Bittersweet Triumph For A Fresh Voice Silenced Too Soon

With his audacious embrace of otherness, it's no surprise that So invokes Herman Melville's Moby Dick in his fiction. Anthony, So's counterpart in "Human Development," defines the process of finding oneself as the will to reject Ahab's fatal quest and embrace "the profound calm of Ishmael's aimless wandering." The idea of freedom, as affirmed by So's characters, means the courage to explore endless detours. His "Three Women of Chuck's Donuts" — seen talking, fighting, and reading Wittgenstein behind the illuminated window of their bakery in the wee hours — is not a portrait of captive loneliness reminiscent of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, but of feisty, hopeful women who learn to manage feckless men, while striving to grasp the complexities of their cultural identity. In the story, wise, 16-year-old Tevy pities an older male customer for his limited worldview. The man, who speaks Khmer, born and raised in Cambodia and a survivor of the genocide, only sees himself as Chinese because he has married an ethnic Chinese to further his bloodline instead of a Khmer woman.

In portraying lives subject to multiple perils and displacements, So treats the legacy of genocide with astute nuance — as if such trauma is both integral and incidental to his characters. Mental illness and suicide could be traced back to the genocide, or not. The term survivor is fraught with ambiguities. The women running Chuck's Donuts wonder if the risks associated with their 24/7 workplace — drive-by gang shootings, robberies, an imminent visit from a creditor with mob connections — make having survived the genocide seem like an afterthought.

Full article: https://text.npr.org/1023930049

Book by Cambodian-American Author, Who Died on Brink of Stardom, Receives Much Acclaim
Anthony Veasna So’s book is hailed as a highly original work full of compassion and humor that vividly describes life as a young Cambodian-American.
24 August 2021
Seourn Vathana
VOA Khmer

WASHINGTON D.C. — A new book by Anthony Veasna So is being hailed as an exciting and highly original work of literary fiction that captures what it is like to grow up in contemporary American society as a child of Cambodian refugees.

The book is being widely praised by literary critics and welcomed by the Cambodian-American community for its vivid descriptions—full of humor and compassion—of families grappling with the traumas of Khmer Rouge survival, while also navigating the cultural dislocation and socio-economic challenges of refugee resettlement.

Written from the perspectives of young Cambodian-Americans, So’s collection of short stories, called “Afterparties,” offers a fresh look at the contemporary experience of this second generation of the Cambodian diaspora.

Until now, most depictions of Cambodians in English-language writing and film are memoirs and non-fiction books, and few well-known movies, which focus on the older generation’s dramatic stories of surviving the killing fields and their refugee journeys to Western countries.

“Afterparties” was recently launched with much fanfare by well-known American literary house Ecco, which printed 100,000 copies after it reportedly signed So on a $300,000-deal for two books. (Another book based on segments from an unfinished novel is expected in 2023).

Sadly, So did not live to see his first book published, as he died in December 2020 at his home in San Francisco of an accidental drug overdose. He was 28.

The New Yorker, which first published some of his early stories, described So’s death as “cutting short a literary career of extraordinary achievement and immense promise.”

A Washington Post review wrote: “‘Afterparties’ insists on a prismatic understanding of Cambodian American diaspora through stories that burst with as much compassion as comedy, making us laugh just when we’re on the verge of crying.”

“It is this ability to make pain shape-shift into the hopeful and the hilarious that makes So’s work so compelling.”

His writing captures the second generation’s perspective on the effects of lingering trauma and other issues at the heart of Cambodian-American community, such as family, friendship and religion (delving into Buddhist beliefs about reincarnation, for instance). He also touches on more common issues such as the contemporary complexities of race, youth and sexuality.

So, who was gay, reportedly once described his own work as “post-khmer genocide queer stoner fiction.”

As any Cambodian born to Khmer Rouge survivors will tell you, the horror stories and traumas inflicted by the murderous 1970s regime are an inseparable part of growing up in a Cambodian family.

Sometimes, parents will relate a survival story with a life lesson for a child or adolescent, or they may talk about their experiences in a more light-hearted way, other times they may simply need somebody to listen to their past experiences or feelings.
"Reading through ‘Afterparties,’ it was so resonant, it was so refreshing, to see the Cambodian diaspora, which is not represented in literature—apart from the survival literature."

So’s sharp observations about his parents’ coping mechanisms and traumas, and its effects on their children, offer an unflinching look at the multi-generational impact of war and violence. Yet, he never overlooks the humor and absurdity of some of the situations this creates for the second generation, who are growing up in modern America, 10,000 miles away from Cambodia.

In one of the stories, a father scolds a teenager who drinks ice water, and shouts: “There were no ice cubes in the genocide!”
https://www.voacambodia.com/a/book-by-c ... 14147.html

Wow, what a path to navigate. He must have had guts.

RIP, Soldier.
Highest honours to you.

There is an interview with the late Antony Veasna So on the link below, for those who want to know more about this talented Khmer man who died too young.

“I want reading to save people” — Anthony Veasna So
By
Soft Punk Mag -
February 15, 2022

I met Anthony Veasna So for an interview over Zoom last year. Throughout our conversation, Anthony was hilarious, brilliant, and kind. The interview had been scheduled for thirty minutes; we spoke for almost four hours. Anthony and I agreed to work together on editing down the interview transcript and adding clarifications where necessary, but we never got the chance. Anthony passed away on December 8th, 2020, at the age of 28.

In collaboration with Anthony’s partner, Alex Torres, we’ve decided to publish a condensed version of this interview, as a way of honoring Anthony’s remarkable life and work. It has been edited for clarity.
I hope that after reading it, you will consider buying a copy of Anthony’s beautiful collection of short stories, Afterparties, out August 3rd from Ecco Press.

In full: https://softpunkmag.com/essay/i-want-re ... -veasna-so