AUTHOR · SPEAKER · ACTIVIST · STORYTELLER
“I believe we all have the power to rewrite our lives.” ~ Loung Ung
Three memoirs. A Netflix film directed by Angelina Jolie. A graphic novel coming. And twenty-five years on stages from Stanford and Dartmouth to the United Nations.
25+
YEARS SPEAKING
3
MEMOIRS
50+
CAMBODIA TRIPS
100+
EVENTS WORLDWIDE
Stanford · Dartmouth · Georgetown · United Nations · Women in the World · Conrad N. Hilton Foundation · University of Iowa · Omega Institute · Singapore American School · Phillips Academy · Middlesex School · PathNorth · Shanghai American School · United States Coast Guard Academy · Facing History & Ourselves · British Columbia Nurses’ Union · Magnificat High School
A MESSAGE FROM LOUNG
Welcome.
I hope you leave here feeling inspired by life. The beauty. The struggles. The resilience. The triumphs.
The connections. The miracles.
My wish is that this site inspires you to create change — in your life, our communities, our world.
If you are a curious reader: Thank you. Your willingness to sit with someone else's story is itself an act of empathy.
If you are a Change Maker: Thank you for your work to build a world that is safer and more beautiful for all of us. I hope my story, my books, and my words continue this worthy work.
If you are a survivor: I wish you to know this. Your suffering is not the whole of who you are. It is one part of a life's experience.
The whole of who you are has not yet been written.
You have the power to write it.
Joy as Resistance
Resilience is defiance — and it is joy, chosen daily and deliberately, that carried Loung from surviving to thriving.
First They Killed My Father: An Eyewitness Account
The memoir read in classrooms around the world, brought to life by the woman who lived it.
From Memoir to Movie to Graphic Novel
One story, three lives — a bestselling book, Angelina Jolie’s Netflix film, and the graphic novel Spirits of Survival.
The books…
What Readers Say
“A riveting memoir — an important, moving work that those who have suffered cannot afford to forget, and those who have been spared cannot afford to ignore.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“Tells her stories straightforwardly, vividly, and without any strenuous effort to explicate their importance, allowing the stories themselves to create their own impact.”
The New York Times
“This spunky child warrior carried me with her in her courageous quest for life. Reading these pages has strengthened me in my own struggle.”
Sister Helen Prejean, Author Dead Man Walking
The room after the story…
What Organizers Say
“Loung connected with students, staff and parents. Her sense of social justice and humanity has touched the minds, hearts and souls of our community.”
Mark R. Boyer, Assistant Superintendent, Singapore American School
“Loung received a standing ovation from an audience of over 500 who were captured by the substance of the subject matter and her passion for social justice.”
Chivy Sok, Deputy Director, University of Iowa Center for Human Rights
“The audience was riveted to their seats and there were few dry eyes in the house. Thank you for helping to make this event one of our best ever.”
Germaine W. Covington, Director, Seattle Office for Civil Rights
What I believe…
“We are made from the strength of every ancestor who survived. And thrived.”
Loung Ung was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia — one of seven children of a high-ranking government official who loved his city, his family, and the open markets where fried crickets were better than candy. She was five years old when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city in April 1975 and changed everything.
Separated from her family to survive, trained as a child soldier, reunited with her surviving family in a camp for internally displaced people after the Khmer Rouge fell — Loung eventually made her way to Vermont, and then in 1995, back to Cambodia.
She never stopped going back.
Across more than 50 trips to Cambodia, she has witnessed her country's transformation, celebrated its 2,000-year history, and carried its stories — its temples, its mythology, its people.
Writing gave Loung her voice, and she has spent it on others. She worked as a community educator at the Abused Women's Advocacy Project in Maine, and from 1997 to 2005 served as spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World, part of the Nobel Peace Prize--winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines. She wrote the Cambodian chapter of Girl Rising, the documentary about girls fighting for the right to an education. The World Economic Forum named her one of its "100 Global Youth Leaders of Tomorrow." And since 1995, when she first went back to find the family she had left behind, she has returned to Cambodia more than fifty times.
Her story has been told in The New York Times, The Washington Post and People; on CNN, Nightline, The Today Show and NPR's Fresh Air; and in documentaries for Germany's ARTE and Japan's NHK. Now it is about to be told again, in a new form. Spirits of Survival, a graphic novel coming in 2027 from Astra Publishing, weaves Cambodian mythology into her story for a new generation of readers. Read Full Bio