Alison Wong (Image by Phil Nitchie)

Alison Wong

Alison Wong’s poetry collection, Cup (Steele Roberts, 2006) was shortlisted for the Jessie Mackay Award for first book of poetry at the 2007 Montana NZ Book Awards. Her work was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2015, 2007 and 2006. An NZSA mentor, Alison was a poetry judge for the 2018 Ockham NZ Book Awards and in 2020 a consulting editor for the Asian NZ culture site Hainamana.

Her novel, As the Earth Turns Silver (Penguin/Picador, 2009) won the 2010 NZ Post Book Award for Fiction, was shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, and in 2018 was selected by Booksellers NZ as one of the top 20 bestsellers of the decade.

Alison’s poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction are anthologised, translated and published internationally. She has held the Robert Burns Fellowship, Shanghai International Writer’s Residency and Sun Yat-sen University International Writer’s Residency.

A fourth-generation New Zealander, Alison moves back and forth across the Tasman. She will be travelling throughout the country as coeditor of AUP’s A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand), the first anthology of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction by Asian New Zealanders.

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