About
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier is an East Coast native living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she recently served as a San Francisco Library Laureate. She is nose-to-grindstone on a novel and a screenplay, and is final judge of the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest.
Soma’s third prose chapbook, Don’t Give Up on Alan Greenspan, was selected as the winner of CutBank‘s 2018 contest and will be released in 2019. Her previous fiction chapbooks—Salve (Nomadic Press) and Collateral Damage: A Triptych (RopeWalk Press)—earned praise from Nikki Giovanni, Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket, Antonya Nelson, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Molly Giles, Michelle Tea and others.
Soma’s writing has been singled out by HBO, Robert Olen Butler, Jim Shepard, Frederick Barthelme and others—and placed in literary competitions offered by Zoetrope, Glimmer Train, the Mississippi Review and more. Her poetry and fiction have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and one of her award-winning short fiction pieces was named a Notable Story by the storySouth Million Writers Award authors.
You can find her work online at Eclectica Magazine, Carve Magazine, Eleven Eleven and Kore Press – or read her interviews with CBS, SF Weekly and Women’s Quarterly Conversation. Recent stories are also available in Glimmer Train, issue 96, and ZYZZYVA, issue 106. If poetry and fiction don’t float your boat, read Soma’s brief Glimmer Train essay on literary craft. (Writers: if you try the prompt, send Soma your results.)
Soma serves as Chair and Assistant Professor of English and the Humanities at Cogswell College. She has also taught at the Sarah Lawrence College Summer High School Writers Program, Holy Names University, Gavilan College, Oakland School for the Arts and Valhalla Women’s Correctional Facility—and worked at KQED, the Bay Area’s public media source. In 2015 she founded COG, a multimedia literary publication run with her undergraduate students at Cogswell, which has featured Dave Eggers, Opal Palmer Adisa, Gish Jen, Denise Duhamel and many more.
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.