Sopeap eventually agrees, but on the conditions that Sang Ly must study very hard and buy Sopeap good alcohol each week. As she turns to leave, Sang Ly finds the nerve to ask Sopeap to teach her to read, to give her and her son hope in the midst of their poverty. When Sopeap returns some time later, she forgives Sang Ly and Ki’s unpaid rent as thanks for the book. The old woman leaves silently with the book, and Ki returns with a bandaged head and a knife he has used the last of their money to buy, hoping to protect himself from the gangs. Sopeap holds the book and reads through its pages silently, and since it obviously means a great deal to her, Sang Ly gives it to her as a gift. Sang Ly is unable to pay, and Sopeap threatens to evict them until she sees an illustrated children’s book sitting in their hut, which Ki had found in the dump earlier that day. While he is gone, Sopeap Sin, Stung Meanchey’s old, drunken, and bitter Rent Collector, comes to Sang Ly’s one-room hut to demand their rent payment for the month. One day while Ki is out picking trash, a gang of youths beat him and steal his money, leaving him with a severe head wound that requires a trip to a local clinic. Like the other villagers in Stung Meanchey, they scratch out a meager living by picking through newly-arrived garbage and sorting out recyclable materials to sell to a scrap vendor. He is the proud father of four children, all girls but three.Sang Ly, her husband Ki Lim, and their infant son Nisay live in Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste dump in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Other books include The Other Side of the Bridge, Christmas by Accident, and his latest book, In Times of Rain and War will release in April 2021.Ĭamron lives with his wife, Alicyn, just south of Salt Lake City at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. The Orphan Keeper won Book of the Year, Gold accolades in Multicultural Fiction from Foreword Reviews. The Rent Collector, his second book, won Best Novel of the Year from the Whitney Awards and was a nominee for the prestigious International DUBLIN Literary Award. Letters for Emily has been published in North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Korea, the Netherlands, and China. His first book, Letters for Emily, was a Readers Choice Award winner, as well as a selection of the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild.

He has owned several successful retail stores in addition to working with his wife in the fashion industry, designing for the McCall Pattern Company in New York.Ĭamron says he began writing to get out of attending MBA school, and it proved the better decision. He has a master’s degree in Writing and Public Relations from Westminster College.

Camron Wright was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The rent collector author