Ray Kania

Ray Kania is a writer whose work has appeared in a variety of publications, from scholarly journals to the sports pages of newspapers.

Kania, a former Vietnamese/Thai-Lao interpreter, was the senior coordinator for National Security Agency intelligence gathering missions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. During this period, as a personal project, he collected information that would lead to an ethnography of the So people of Northeast Thailand. Included in the study is a phonetic alphabet, the first for this spoken language.

As a Marshallese police officer, he was directly involved with operations against Russian (Soviet) special forces units at Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands from 1986-1988.

He has written about a number of diverse subjects as a result of his travels and eclectic interests. They include: Southeast Asia (politics, sociology, and language), sports, physical fitness, nature, Pacific Islanders, intelligence gathering, and human interest.

He has participated in a number of sports (primarily basketball and soccer) at several levels, from college to a prison league.

Along the way he has collected two BA degrees in philosophy and political science. Among his language skills are a working knowledge or better (speaking, reading, and writing) of Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese, and Arabic.

Partial list of credits/clients:

• Asian Survey

• Florida Living

• St. Petersburg Times

• The Asia Mail

• The Orlando Sentinel (Insight)

• Journal of the Siam Society

• Vietnam Magazine.

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