I’m a court reporter. For years now, I’ve sat in rooms where the stakes are high and the words matter—depositions, hearings, proceedings across the criminal, civil, and administrative landscape. I capture what people say at the moments that change everything, word for word, without flinching and without editorializing. That’s the job. I love it.
I’m also a first-generation Cambodian American, the daughter of immigrants who built a life in a country that wasn’t always sure what to do with them. I married into a Black family, and I’m raising children who move through the world differently than I do. I’ve spent most of my adult life learning what it means to be a witness—to other people’s pain, other people’s joy, other people’s version of America. Done carefully and honestly, witnessing is its own kind of love.
Jacksonville is home, no matter how I’ve tried to escape. It’s not a backdrop. Not a setting. Home. The heat, the neighborhoods, the water everywhere, the way this city holds its contradictions without apology. It shows up in everything I write because it’s woven into everything I am.
I came to fiction the way most writers do—through years of writing that wasn’t quite it, until something finally was. A case I couldn’t put down. A courtroom. A city that stayed. I’m trained not to react, but some things follow you home anyway.
This is where I share the work—the fiction, the essays, the process of writing, revising, and finding its way into the world. I’m glad you’re here.