Monica Sok had a very Lancaster County childhood.
She lived in a brick house with her parents and older brother on Bareview Drive in Leola, a short walk away from cornfields. She went to Conestoga Valley High School and practically lived at the former Leola Public Library. She spent her free time climbing trees and biking three minutes down the road to now-closed Wild Bill’s beef jerky, or to Turkey Hill to buy bubblegum and Slim Jims. Her family bought watermelons and corn from roadside Amish stands. Her aunties work at the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup factory in Hershey, and in the summer before graduate school at New York University, Sok worked the assembly line with them.
“There’s very subtle details about how Lancaster reflects me, or is reflected inside of me,” Sok said. “It’s strange because I just grew up feeling very out of place.”
Now, Sok, 35, has made New York City her home. She’s an award-winning poet who writes mostly about the Cambodian diaspora, inspired by her life as the daughter of refugees in Lancaster County.
On March 30, Franklin & Marshall College will welcome Sok home for the 2026 Emerging Writers Festival. It will be Sok’s first local literary event.
Sok is currently an English professor at Barnard College, and formerly lectured at Stanford University and taught poetry at the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland, California.
Her debut poetry book, “A Nail the Evening Hangs On,” reflects on the experiences of the Cambodian diaspora, of those who survived the Khmer Rouge — a communist regime that killed between 1.5 to 3 million people in Cambodia, already destabilized by U.S. bombings during the Vietnam War, in the 1970s — and those who didn’t.
Finding Lancaster
Sok’s family didn’t talk much about what had happened in Cambodia.
They were some of the only people of color on her street in Leola, Sok said. She remembers the loneliness her “angsty teenager self” felt, the lack of understanding about how and why she ended up in Amish country.
“In our household, there was so much familial silence around the genocide and our history,” Sok said. “However, my dad and my mom always made sure we knew that we were Khmer.”
Early on, her parents spoke Khmer — a word for both the national language and the majority ethnic group of Cambodia — to their children. But as time went on, they wanted to practice English for work, her mother at Dart Container Corp. and her father at Case New Holland. They worked hard to adapt. Sok’s father visited a local Amish farm to help wash watermelons, and in return, the farmer helped him find the ripest watermelon to take home.
Monica Sok (right) sits on a tractor wheel with her family at Family Day at Case New Holland when she was 8 years old. From top left to right, Bunnawatt Yuos (Sok’s cousin), Ramo Sok (Sok’s brother), Youthana Yuos (Sok’s cousin), Thoch Yuos (Sok’s mother) and Sarith Sok (Sok’s father) pose for a photo.
Monica Sok
Sok has since lost much of her native language, but she practices as much as she can.
“I’ve always had it in my imagination, in my mind, in my body. It’s part of the way I move throughout the world,” Sok said. “It’s a language that I am learning now to read and write.”
Sok’s grandmother, Em Bun, fled Cambodia in 1979 with her four daughters and two sons. They stayed at a refugee camp, Khao I Dang, in Thailand, then in the Philippines, before a Presbyterian church in Harrisburg sponsored the family to move there. Sok’s father settled as a refugee in Toronto and was able to come to the U.S. through an arranged marriage with Sok’s mother. They then moved to Leola.
Less than a decade after settling in Harrisburg, Bun became a National Heritage Fellow through the National Endowment for the Arts for her work to preserve traditional textiles as a master silk weaver. Sok dedicated her book to Bun and featured her silks on the cover.
“I think she would have been very proud of me being able to share our stories,” Sok said. “I do think that what I have in common with my grandmother is that we’re both cultural protectors.”
Nick Montemarano, an English professor at Franklin & Marshall College, nominated Sok to come to the 2026 Emerging Writers Festival this month. He discovered her work through one poem, “ABC for Refugees,” and followed the breadcrumbs to the rest of her debut book.
Montemarano had no idea Sok was from Lancaster County when he made the move to nominate her. In its 24-year history, the festival has only invited Lancaster natives once or twice.
“Oh, my goodness. We love this person’s poetry, and she’s from Lancaster?” Montemarano said. “This is a slam dunk.”
2026 EMERGING WRITERS FESTIVAL
The Emerging Writers Festival, founded in 2002, invites early-career writers to Franklin & Marshall College to celebrate their work every spring.
This year, five writers will present readings and craft talks on campus from Monday, March 30, to Wednesday, April 1, in events led by the Philadelphia Alumni Writers House.
Along with participation in readings and a writer panel, Monica Sok, a poet and Lancaster native, will give a craft talk at the Writers House, 633 College Avenue, Lancaster, at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, April 1.
To see a full schedule of Emerging Writers Festival events, visit lanc.news/EWF26.
Becoming a poet
Sok’s poetry journey began in elementary school.
A guest teacher visited her fifth grade class to give a lesson on personification. Sok wrote about whispering flowers and was excited by the way she could make non-humans speak.
The trauma and brutality she writes about now, prison camps and war museums, didn’t reach the surface until later.
As a young teen at Conestoga Valley, Sok was assigned a book presentation for English class. Students had to select a biography or memoir, then complete a presentation on the book in character as the narrator.
Sok said Patty McClune, the school librarian, chased her down the hallway to give her “First They Killed My Father,” a memoir by Loung Ung, a Cambodian-American survivor of an orphan work camp during the Khmer Rouge regime.
McClune said she doesn’t remember the exact encounter, but she does remember Sok as a good, motivated student.
“While it is narrated by a child, I would not consider it a YA book,” McClune said. “This book is certainly not a title that I would recommend lightly or routinely.”
Sok borrowed black clothing, capris and an Ann Taylor top, to wear to class, since the child laborers were forced to wear standardized black clothes in an effort to diminish individuality. As she stepped up for her presentation, Sok said she remembered the children didn’t wear shoes, at least not real ones, so she slipped off her Adidas sneakers.
She said she remembers how cold the floor was, that she started to cry, that no one knew what to say.
“That was when I realized that my family had lived through the Khmer Rouge. They had survived a genocide,” Sok said. “How is it that I’ve been able to make it through my education in Lancaster without knowing anything about this?”
Sok still credits McClune for her love of reading, for connecting her to something when she felt like she didn’t quite belong.
McClune, who now lives in a retirement community in East Petersburg, said she hopes to attend Sok’s events at the Emerging Writers Festival.
“Every librarians’ dream is to give the right book to the right student at the right time,” McClune said by email, “to plant that seed.”
As for what comes next, Sok said she will continue to visit Lancaster often, as she does now to visit her parents a short train ride away from New York City. She’s busy writing her second book of poems, which will spend more time on Lancaster than her first book.
“I’m excited to weave together the landscape of Cambodia alongside that of Lancaster,” Sok said. “They’re going to appear side by side. I’m excited about creating that world.”
CONNECTED THROUGH HISTORY
Lancaster city, once dubbed by BBC as “America’s refugee capital,” takes in more refugees per capita than the national average. Lancaster was the first certified “Welcoming City” for refugees in Pennsylvania.
Since President Donald Trump took office for the second time in January 2025, the Trump administration has ramped up deportation efforts and placed restrictions on refugees and asylum seekers looking for safety in the U.S.
Monica Sok, an award-winning poet, will return to her home county of Lancaster to read her work on the Cambodian diaspora and refugees at the 2026 Emerging Writers Festival at Franklin & Marshall College.
Sok said she is concerned about recent actions taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and what it could mean for her family and others. She said she hopes her work reaches white Americans, including those she grew up with, and starts a conversation.
“I would hope that they can read my poetry and understand that we’re connected through history, that immigrants and refugees are humans,” Sok said. “I just want people to become more curious about their role and their responsibility for one another.”
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