Putsata Reang is an award-winning 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.

Her debut memoir, “Ma and Me” (FSG/MCD May 17, 2022) won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association prize for Nonfiction; and was a finalist for a Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Lambda Literary Prize.

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 teaches memoir writing in public schools, and is a frequent public speaker at colleges, and conferences, as well as public and private institutions including Microsoft and the State Fund of California. She has been interviewed on national podcasts, TV and radio, including Dani Shapiro’s “Family Secrets” podcast and NPR’s “On Point” with Meghna Chakrabarti.