New Zealand Writers

WONG, Alison

'Her command of language and juxtaposition of the mundane and cerebral are masterful.'
Patricia Soper, Southland Times, 18 March 2006

Wong, Alison (1960 – ) is a poet and fiction writer. Born in Hastings, New Zealand, she has a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Victoria University of Wellington and is a graduate of Bill Manhire’s Original Composition class at the same university. Wong has lived and worked in Shanghai and New Zealand as an information technology analyst and writer.

Wong’s first collection of poetry, Cup (Steele Roberts, 2006), is described by Megan Fleming in The Lumiere Reader (14 February 2006) as, being ‘mostly accessible: there are the details of domestic moments, the wonder of a new child, the falling out of love – but she lends these subjects a humble and attentive form, drawing the reader in, to rest in the space between.’

Reviewing Cup in the Southland Times, Patricia Soper comments that ‘there is a geographic and domestic component to her work – small, everyday things re-created, elevated and lashed to the mast of sanity. A book to re-read.’

In 1996 Wong held a Reader’s Digest-New Zealand Society of Authors Fellowship at the Stout Research Centre and a New Zealand Founders Society Research Award. She is a founder of Porirua’s Poetry Café. Wong was the Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago in 2002.

Her poetry and fiction has been widely published in literary journals and magazines such as, Landfall, Sport, the New Zealand Listener, and Meanjin (Australia). Her poem, ‘The Archaeologist’, was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2006.

Alison Wong lives at Titahi Bay.

(KM)

Links:

Best New Zealand Poems 2006
New Zealand Electronic Text Centre – excerpt from a novel-in-progress and poems by Alison Wong
Other Voices International Project – online poetry anthology