Pichchenda Bao (she/her) is a Cambodian American poet and writer. She was born in Cambodia, in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge regime. She and her parents arrived as refugees to the United States. She grew up in northern Virginia, and now lives, writes and raises her children in New York City.
Her work speaks to the interwoven nature of grief, resilience, survivor’s guilt, generational divides, wonder, and the everyday. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous print and online literary journals.
In addition, her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, a Pushcart Prize, made into limited-edition broadsides by the Center for Book Arts, part of a video poem of Queensbound poets commissioned by the Queens Museum, and part of THREADS, an artistic collaboration between Poets of Queens and international textile artists.