Alison Wong

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Alison Wong (born 1960) is a poet and is a New Zealander of Chinese heritage.^[1] Wong’s background in mathematics comes across in her poetry, not as a subject, but in the careful formula of words to white space and precision. She has a half-Chinese son with a New Zealand poet.

[edit] Career and awards

Wong has received various awards for her fiction and poetry including the 2002 Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago, a Readers Digest - NZ Society of Authors Fellowship at the Stout Research Centre and a NZ Founders Society Research Award. She has been a finalist in several poetry competitions and received grants from Creative NZ and the Willi Fels Memorial Trust. In 2003, she has been a guest writer at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival and the Wordstruck! Festival in Dunedin, as well as a speaker for the Stout Research Centre Chinese New Zealand Seminar Series. In 2001, together with Lindsay Forbes, she received a Porirua City Council Civic Honour Award for co-founding and running Poetry Cafe.

Her first poetry collection Cup was released in February 2006 by Steele Roberts.^[2] It was shortlisted for a poetry prize in the Montana Book awards.