Dedicated to nurturing community and the arts, Sophearcheath (Sophea) Heang is a second-generation Cambodian-Canadian spoken word artist, writer and poet. Her previous experience in child and youth care, special education, as a civil servant and currently as co-founder of Angkor Harvest
allows her to serve holistically.
She’s volunteered in leadership with the Richmond Arts Coalition and BC Culture Days. Additionally, Sophea produced two impactful community-based arts events for BC Culture Days: (1) Invoking Memory that Never Sheds its Potency, and (2) We Are All Storytellers: River beneath a river.
Sophea also co-produced, alongside the Cambodian Cultural Centre, its inaugural event: Roots of Compassion. It commemorated the 50th year anniversary of the Cambodian genocide. Her poem, Roots of Compassion, written in 2023, guided the artistic and cultural programming:
Sophea co-facilitated Pandora’s Collective and Word Vancouver’s, Free Verse Program (Sept 2025). It's a creative writing program that brings the voices of incarcerated writers from Mission Medium (men) and Fraser Valley Institution (women) to the Vancouver community.
Led by the power of storytelling and empathy, Sophea recites with a compassionate voice. Moving within threads of memory, resilience and potential.
Sophea’ s poem, Walking into Khao Dang was written for BC’s Hearts of Freedom exhibit inauguration. She performed the poem, at SFU Bentall III, in Vancouver in 2023. HOF is a national Canadian Southeast Asian Historical Research Project (https://heartsoffreedom.org).
Another bi-lingual poem Sophea wrote, Inside Heartwood, is published in Canadian Literature, special issue 261, Swirling into a Field of Life: Works in Conversation with Y-Dang Troeung:
https://canlit.ca/article/inside-heartwood1/
Sophea was also researcher and author of the article, Remembering Cambodian Rock and Roll, commissioned by the Vancouver Arts Club during its run of Cambodian Rock Band (March 2025):
https://sopheaheang.com/khmer-rock-and-roll
Currently, Sophea is completing her first book, Remember Me in Stillness, -a prose and poetry memoir-; a creative inquiry into the inter-generational genocide experience of Cambodian-Canadians who arrived in Canada in the 1980’s. Remember Me in Stillness is supported by Canada Council for the Arts. Sweet Tamarind Tree, A Letter to My Mother: Dear Mak are poems from the manuscript: