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, won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association prize for nonfiction and was a finalist for a Dayton Literary Peace Prize and Lambda Literary Prize.
 
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.
 
Putsata was born in Cambodia and raised in rural Oregon. She 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.