About the Contributors

Pollie Bith was born in the province of Battambang during the Pol Pot era and moved to the United States in 1980 . She lives and works in Honolulu.

Nick Bozanic lives in Honolulu with his wife and two sons. His most recent book is This Once: Poems 1976-1996; selections from his work-in-progress, Devotion, are forthcoming in an anthology celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Anhinga Press.

David Chandler was a U.S. foreign service officer in Cambodia in the early 1960 s, then took up an academic career. From 1972 to 1997 , he taught history at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His books include A History of Cambodia, Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot, and Voices from s -21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison. His books of translation include Favorite Stories from Cambodia. He lives in Melbourne.

Chuth Khay was born in 1940 in Koh Somrong, an island on the Mekong about one hundred kilometers north of the capital. The youngest son, he was the only one in a family with ten children to attend a Western school. He pursued primary and secondary studies in Kompong Cham. While working as a teacher of French, he attended classes at the University of Phnom Penh, and in 1968 , he received his law degree. Opposed to the monarchy, he became a legal advisor to the ministry of defense after Sihanouk's removal from power in 1970 . From 1973 to 1974 , he served as interim dean of the law school. In 1973 , he published two successful collections of short stories: Ghouls, Ghosts, and Other Infernal Creatures and Widow of Five Husbands. He also wrote for Soth Polin's newspaper, Nokor Thom, and published his books and translations through its publishing house. Forced into the countryside by the Khmer Rouge, he miraculously escaped death. Granted refuge in France in 1980 and French citizenship, he took the name Chuth Chance, for receiving a second chance in life. He worked for several years as a taxi driver, and is now retired and lives near Paris. He has never returned to Cambodia.

Jeremy Colvin recently moved to Hawai'i from England, where he received a graduate degree from Oxford University. A researcher and editor, he lives with his wife in Honolulu.

Catherine Filloux is the author of numerous plays, the holder of various distinctions—including Fulbright senior specialist and James Thurber playwright-in-residence—and the recipient of new-play commissions from Contemporary American Theater and Theatreworks/USA. From the Asian Cultural Council, she received an artist's residency fellowship, which allowed her to go to Cambodia. Her essay in this issue of Manoa first appeared in the winter 2002 issue of @and...New Dramatists Publication.

Marie-Christine Garneau is an associate professor of French language and literature at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Theo Garneau has a master's degree in French literature from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and is a master's-degree candidate in English.

Maha Ghosananda was elected Somteja (Supreme Patriarch) of Cambodian Buddhism in 1988 and has been nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He is also a scholar and translator of fifteen languages.

Hak Chhay Hok was born in 1944 in the province of Battambang. Between 1965 and 1975 , he wrote thirty novels, collaborated with a number of journals, and occasionally worked for the cinema. His best-known works include O Smoke of Death, Drifting with Karma, The Lightning of the Magic Sword, In the Shadow of Angkor, and Oh! Sorry, Dad! The story in this issue of Manoa is from the last book; in this piece, he adapted the structure of ayai, a traditional Khmer verse form, to prose. A few months after the fall of Phnom Penh, he published Little Manual for the Dissipation of Misery. He was disappeared by the Khmer Rouge.

Alex Hinton is the author of three scholarly books on genocide: Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide, Genocide: An Anthropological Reader, and Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the...