Alison Wong

Alison Wong is a Chinese New Zealand poet, novelist and creative non-fiction writer. She now lives in Australia and moves back and forth across the Tasman. In the 1980s she spent two years in China on a NZ-China Student Exchange Scholarship then spent 1994 in Shanghai. In 2014 she returned to China for the Shanghai International Writers’ Programme and in 2016 for the Sun Yat Sen University International Writers’ Residency. 

Her debut novel, As the Earth Turns Silver,won the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Her poetry collection, Cup,was shortlisted for Best First Book for Poetry at the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards and her poetry appears in Best New Zealand Poems 2015, 2007 and 2006. She was a judge for poetry at the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Her work has been translated and published internationally.

As part of the AAAH2018 Symposium @ Te Papa Alison Wong presented Breathing Life into Old Bones alongside Kirsten Wong.