High school English teacher and emerging author Kimarlee Nguyen of New York City succumbed to the coronavirus on April 5, 2020.

Sadly, many New York City educators have succumbed to the coronavirus. One of these is Kimarlee Nguyen, a high school teacher at Brooklyn Latin School. Kimarlee passed away on April 5, 2020. She was only 33 years old.

Kimarlee was born and raised in Revere, Massachusetts, to parents who survived the Khmer Rouge. After graduation from high school, she enrolled at Vassar College, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in English. She recently earned her Master’s degree in Fine Arts from Long Island University, Brooklyn.

Kimarlee taught English at the Boston Latin School since 2014, and she was beloved by her students. “She was a role model, an influence, and a source of hope,” asserts student Sulagna Sarkar. “I remember once walking in when visiting her. She began to ask everything from how was the family, to how school was. It showed not only did she listen when we would go to her, but she cared,” the student continued. “She was everything for a person that was struggling in our school. She was understanding and loving. She loved us all like her own children and she was loved, even if she didn’t know it, by ten times as many people because that’s just who she was,” Sulagna concluded.

In addition to being a beloved teacher, Kimarlee was also a rising star as an author. Her work has been published in Drunken Boat, Hyphen, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. “She was such a fierce defender for the right for marginalized people to have a voice, particularly southeast Asians,” expressed fellow author Cherry Lou Sy. “She was a champion for that cause.” Kimarlee was a recipient of the Teacher and Librarian Scholarship from the Key West Literary Seminar in 2017. She was named a 2018 Emerging Writer Fellow by The Center for Fiction. The young teacher was one of nine chosen from over 500 applicants. Each writer selected garnered a grant of $5,000, the opportunity to work on a manuscript with a distinguished editor, and the chance to read at public events at The Center.

To read more about this amazing educator, see this memorial at Kundiman.