Ira Sukrungruang, a Thai-American author of the memoir, “Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy,” and the poetry collection, “In Thailand It is Night,” will speak at SUNY Fredonia on Thursday, April 3, as part of the Mary Louise White Visiting Writers Series.
Students and community members are invited to meet the writer in an interactive setting at his craft talk, held from 4 to 5 p.m., and attend a reading and book signing that starts at 7 p.m. Both will be conducted in McEwen Hall Room 202, include a question-and-answer session and are free and open to the public.
The Chicago-born Sukrungruang co-edited, “What Are You Looking At: The First Fat Fiction Anthology,” the first book to examine the fat experience through the lens of literature, and, “Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Non-fiction Anthology,” which includes essays by David Sedaris, Lori Gottlieb, Stephen Kuusisto, Pam Houston and others. Both were published by Harcourt Brace.
Essays, poems and short stories by Sukrungruang have been published in many literary journals, including Creative Nonfiction, the Sun, the Bellingham Review, North American Review, Crab Orchard Review, Post Road and Brevity.
A decorated writer, Sukrungruang has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Nonfiction Fellowship, a Just Desserts Fiction Prize and an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award. He is also the recipient of support from the Blue Mountain Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Ragdale.
Sukrungruang serves as an associate professor of English at the University of South Florida’s College of Arts and Sciences. He earned an M.F.A. in English - Creative Writing from Ohio State University and formerly taught at SUNY Oswego, where he was a two-time nominee for the President’s Teaching Award.
The Mary Louise White Visiting Writers Series, established through the Fredonia College Foundation, brings two authors, one a fiction writer the other a non-fiction writer, to campus each semester.
