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A week after Anthony Veasna So, an emerging author on the cusp of success, died unexpectedly at age 28, a far-flung but tightknit literary community is in shock and mourning over what might have been.
So died Dec. 8 in San Francisco, according to his partner, Alex Torres. No cause of death was given.
His highly anticipated short story collection, “Afterparties,” to be published in August by Ecco Press, offers a series of portraits of Cambodian Americans grappling with the inherited trauma of the genocide that their parents fled.
“I was completely dazzled by it,” said Helen Atsma, Ecco’s vice president and editorial director and So’s editor, recalling the first time she read his manuscript one of the first she acquired for the publishing company. “The writing was so punchy and funny and smart and attuned to pop culture and life in California.