Writing in the margins

Auckland writer Tzeming Mok spoke about globalization and the Chinese Diaspora at last month’s Shanghai Literature Festival. Mok, a published poet, author, blogger and journalist, is known for writing about issues of displacement, with a focus on what it means to be Chinese today. “This is the time of the post-Amy Tan generation,” said Mok in the Shanghai Daily. “For Tan, China is the faraway homeland, somewhere in the past, a memory; for young writers like me, China is the reality, which no one can avoid.” Mok will spend the next three months in Beijing developing short story ideas and working on her first novel: an observational piece set in Auckland’s Chinese community in the 1990s.