Putsata Reang

Putsata Reang is an author and journalist whose debut memoir, Ma and Me (MCD/FSG, 2022) was a recipient of the 2023 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association award for nonfiction and a finalist for the 2023 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Washington State Book Award, and Lambda Literary Award. Her writing has appeared in national and international publications including The New York Times, Ms magazine, The Mercury News (San Jose, CA), Politico, and the Guardian. She has lived and worked in more than a dozen countries including Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Thailand. Putsata is an alum of Hedgebrook, Mineral School, and Kimmel Harding Nelson residencies and was a fellow of the Jack Straw Writers Program. In 2005, she was awarded an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship that took her back to her homeland, Cambodia, to report on landless farmers. She is a public speaker and memoir teacher with Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools program.

Ten Things I Can’t Do Without

1. Pocket-size writing notebooks
2. My library card
3. Coffee, perfectly plain
4. Three Ladies rice
5. My nieces and nephews
6. Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”
7. My best friends
8. My passport
9. Free speech
10. Running shoes