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 as a full-time lecturer at Columbia University, Assistant Professor and Artist-in-Residence at Skidmore College, as well as at NYU, Warren Wilson’s MFA program, and Gotham Writers’ Workshop. She was a staff writer and editor at The Millions from 2009-2022 and is founding editor of Bloom.
For over decade Sonya worked in various roles at NYC’s premiere independent arthouse cinema Film Forum, including Director of Development (2003-08), co-programmer of new-release films (2020-25), Deputy Director (2020-23), and Director (2023-25). Currently she lives in New York City.
Photo Credit: Patrick Quarterman
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