Souvankham Thammavongsa

Souvankham Thammavongsa is a Laotian-Canadian poet and author. In 2019, she won an O. Henry Award for her short story "Slingshot", and in 2020 her short story collection How to Pronounce Knife won the Giller Prize.

Early life and education Thammavongsa was born in the Lao refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand, in 1978. She and her parents were sponsored by a family in Canada when she was one year old. She was raised and educated in Toronto, Ontario. Thammavongsa studied at the University of Toronto, majoring in English literature.

Career Her first book, Small Arguments, won a ReLit Award in 2004. Her third book, Light, won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry in 2014. Her short story "How to Pronounce Knife" was a finalist for the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. In 2016, two of her stories, "Mani Pedi" and "Paris", were longlisted for the Journey Prize.

Her first short story collection, How to Pronounce Knife, was published in 2020. In the book's fourteen stories, she draws upon her childhood as the daughter of Laotian immigrants to explore themes of foreignness and belonging. Writer Kerryn Goldsworthy said of the stories that "their language is economical but they are emotional timebombs." The book won the Giller Prize in November 2020. and was a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award.

Thammavongsa was a judge for the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize. She was guest editor for Biblioasis' Best Canadian Poetry 2021 anthology and in 2024 was the judge for the inaugural Montreal Fiction Prize.

Her debut novel Pick a Colour won the 2025 Giller Prize.

She is a creative writing mentor at the University of Toronto.

Poetry collections Small Arguments (Pedlar Press, 2003) Found (Pedlar Press, 2007) Light (Pedlar Press, 2013) Cluster (McClelland & Stewart, 2019)

Edited anthologies

Best Canadian Poetry 2021 (Biblioasis, 2021)

Poems +YearTitleFirst published2000"The Weed Woman"Grain2002"Portrait of a Palm Closing"The Fiddlehead, no. 2112003"Water"Contemporary Verse 2, vol. 25 no. 3"A Firefly"Ricepaper, vol. 8 no. 2"Poem for the Rain"The Malahat Review, no. 142"the weight of salt on palm"Prairie Fire, vol. 24, no. 42006"The Turtle"dANDelion, vol. 32 no. 12007"The Heart"This Magazine2012"Dream"The Fiddlehead, no. 2522013"Lightning Storm Seen From the Window of an Airplane"The Rusty Toque"Perfect"Event, vol. 41 no. 3"Colossal Squid"Windsor Review, vol. 46 no. 1"The Fish in Mammoth Cave""A Sparkle-Scale Sunrise""Fie"Canadian Literature, no. 2162014"Birds, a Description of Them in the Sky"Contemporary Verse 2, vol. 37 no. 1"Mountain Ash""Joule""North"The Goose, vol. 13 no. 1"The Venus Flytrap"2015"We Have Always Lived With Mice"Hart House Review"Pregnant"Room, vol. 38 no. 1"Cluster"The Globe and Mail"Gayatri"The Walrus

Short fiction YearTitleFirst published2014"Bitter Melon"Columbia"Can I Have That One?"Grain, vol. 42 no. 12015"Ewwrrrkk"Joyland"Mani Pedi"The Puritan, no. 30"Rice Paper"Ricepaper"Chick-A-Chee!"Postcolonial Text, vol. 10 no. 3/4"The Ajahn"This Magazine"Charcoal"Prairie Fire2016"The School Bus Driver"Noon2017"How to Pronounce Knife"Granta, no. 1412018"Slingshot"Harper's Magazine2019"The Gas Station"The Paris Review, no. 2282020"Edge of the World"The Atlantic2021"Good-looking"The New Yorker, vol. 97 no. 22022"Trash"The New Yorker2024"Bozo"The New Yorker"Pick a Colour"The Walrus