Born in Bangkok to two of the oldest leading Thai-Chinese banking families, she spent her teens in England.  On returning to Thailand at eighteen, She worked as reporter/columnist in an English language newspaper before resigning to help her late first husband, an ophthalmologist, Uthai Rutnin  establish the Rutnin Eye Hospital of which she still chairs the board of directors.

            She has since lectured at universities, staged public poetry readings, hosted a radio program and produced video documentaries. The plights of disadvantaged adolescent girls in Northern Thailand had moved her to set up Harbor House Foundation in Chiengrai to help those at risk of abuse, drug and prostitution.

            Deeply interested in Buddhism, she has spent long periods in forest monasteries.

            Chamnongsri  is a bilingual writer who writes in both English and Thai.  Her works include poetry, children’s stories, short stories, plays, article, critique and biography such as “Like a Boat in Mid-Ocean”, the best-selling saga of a Thai family from its ancestral days in China.   

            Some of her poems and tales have been translated into French and Japanese as well as put to orchestral music for public performances and recordings.

            Beside her original work, She has also translated several poems and short stories by Thai writers into English.

 

 

 Chamnongsri has four children and six grandchildren. She lives in Bangkok with her second husband, Dr. Jingjai Hanchanlash, a business executive and international development expert. 

 

Awards 

  - John A. Eakin Foundation Award, 1981, Where Dusk End (Play)

  - National Book Award for Children’s Literature, 2000, Orange-8-Legs