Vaddey Ratner

Ratner and her mother went through many violations of human rights as a result of the Khmer Rouge regime. When Ratner was five years old in 1975, she was forced into heavy labor and starvation along with her family, and only Ratner and her mother managed to escape four years later to a Thailand refugee camp. She immigrated to the United States in 1991, later graduating from high school and Cornell University.

Her novel In the Shadow of the Banyan was a finalist for the 2013 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the 2013 Book of the Year Indies Choice Book Award. It was also one of five books that received an Adult Debut Honor Award from the American Booksellers Association.