Officially:  Sonya Chung is the author of the novels The Loved Ones (Relegation Books, 2016) and Long for This World (Scribner, 2010). She is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination, the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the Bronx Council on the Arts Writers’ Residency, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Key West Literary Seminars residency, a Studios of Key West residency, and an Escape to Create residency.  Sonya’s stories, reviews, & essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Tin House, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, Short: An International Anthology, and This is The Place: Women Writing About Home, among others. Sonya has taught fiction writing and literature at Columbia University, Skidmore College, NYU, Warren Wilson’s MFA program, and Gotham Writers’ Workshop. From 2000-2005 she programmed new-release films and was Deputy Director (2000-03) and Director (2003-05) of Film Forum.  Currently she lives in New York City.

Photo Credit: ©Robin Holland/robinholland.com

Additionally: Sonya was born in Washington, DC, and raised in suburban Maryland. She has also lived in Seattle and New England.  She loves wandering urban streets, growing vegetables, Paris, whiskey, cigars, four-minute poached eggs, baking, boots, her doglet Wallace, motorcycles, and kindness.  She is passionately DIY and prefers small living spaces to large ones. The book that made her want to be a writer was Annie Dillard’s A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  

Interviews:

At Minorities in Publishing with Jenn Baker

At Electric Literature with Sion Dayson

At Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop) with Monica Lewis

On The Kojo Nnamdi Show, WAMU 88.5 DC public radio

At The Alt with William Belcher

At Book Q&A’s with Deborah Kalb

At Otherppl podcast with Brad Listi

At Writer’s Bone with Daniel Ford

At Fiction Writers’ Review with Melissa Scholes-Young

At The Millions with Rion Amilcar Scott

At Brooklyn Magazine with Shoba Viswanathan

At Entropy with Melody Nixon

At TriQuarterly with Aram Mrjoian

At Bookslut with Terry Hong

Audio interview with Rachel Glass of Evergreen Radio Reading Service in Seattle

At The Millions with Edan Lepucki

Audio interview on WJFF 90.5 FM Catkills Public Radio with Ian Williams (click player below to listen)

Self-interview at The Nervous Breakdown

My Booknotes Music Playlist at Largehearted Boy

Strata Interview at Open Letters Monthly / Like Fire

At Blogcritics with Carole McDonnell

With Bethanne Patrick / WETA’s The Book Studio