Souvankham Thammavongsa

Souvankham Thammavongsa’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Best American Non-Required Reading, The Journey Prize Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Her debut book of fiction, How to Pronounce Knife, is the winner of the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN America Open Book Award, and the Danuta Gleed Award, and one of Time’s Must-Read Books of 2020. The title story was a finalist for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Thammavongsa is also the author of four poetry books: Light, winner of the Trillium Book Award for Poetry; Found; Small Arguments, winner of the ReLit Award; and, most recently, Cluster.

Born in the Lao refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand, she was raised and educated in Toronto, where she is at work on her first novel.

Titles by Souvankham Thammavongsa are available via our friends and cultural partners at Upstart & Crow in their ISF2021 Gallery –  BUY/PRE-ORDER from Upstart & Crow Today!


Catch Souvankham Thammavongsa at ISF 2021: Knives and Sugar 

 Premiere: June 19th, 7pm PDT

Online event banner for Knives and Sugar event featuring Avni Doshi and Souvankham Thammavongsa.