About
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier’s work has earned nods and awards from authors and entities ranging from Nikki Giovanni to Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket to Sarah Shun-lien Byunum to Billy Collins; from HBO to Zoetrope: All-Story. Her shorter work appears in Glimmer Train, ZYZZYVA, Hyphen, The Mississippi Review and elsewhere. Frazier recently relocated from California—where she’s served as a San Francisco Library Laureate—to New York, for a professorship in creative writing and digital storytelling at SUNY Oswego.
Soma recently completed her first novel, and joined the close-knit family of authors represented by Victoria Sanders & Associates.
Soma’s poetry and fiction have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and won accolades including being named Notable by the storySouth Million Writers Award. You can find her work by here, at the Books page, or online at Hyphen, Eclectica Magazine, Carve Magazine, Eleven Eleven and Kore Press – or read her interviews with CBS, SF Weekly and Women’s Quarterly Conversation. (Writers, consider trying the prompt in Soma’s brief Glimmer Train essay on literary craft.)
Before returning to her native East Coast, Soma served as Chair and Associate Professor of English and the Humanities at Cogswell University of Silicon Valley. She’s taught at the Sarah Lawrence College Summer High School Writers Program, the University of San Francisco, Oakland School for the Arts, Holy Names University, Gavilan College and Valhalla Women’s Correctional Facility—and worked at KQED, a premier national public media source located in the Bay Area. In 2015 she founded COG, a multimedia literary publication that she ran with her undergraduate students at Cogswell, which has featured Dave Eggers, Chen Chen, Opal Palmer Adisa, Gish Jen, Denise Duhamel, Jacob Appel (featured in the documentary film Jacob) and many more. In 2020, she launched Subnivean, a publication staffed by undergraduates at SUNY Oswego.
Literary Agent:
Victoria Sanders & Associates
Just read Flyaways in Glimmertrain. Shades of Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. Accurate capture of the sobering centering that occurs when a mother dies (saw mine leave a few years back under similar circumstances). Some Thomas Mann angst over the loss of a home to go home to again on the last page. I loved it.
Kyle, a thousand thanks for your kind words re. “Flyaways.” I’m ridonkulously bad about keeping up with my website (and just saw your note tonight) but am bowled over by your gracious message. The way we – and our loved ones – exit can be beautiful and ugly and painful and a balm, all at once, right? Really glad you related to the story, and I’ve gotta ask: are you a writer? Either way, you’re a very astute reader, and I’m humbled and honored by your note re. Trumbo.