Alison Wong is a celebrated novelist, poet, creative nonfiction writer, and editor whose works weave together themes of identity, migration, and cultural heritage. Born in Te Matau-a-Māui Hawke’s Bay and of Cantonese descent, her great-grandparents migrated to Aotearoa in the late 19th century – a lineage that deeply informs her writing. 

Her literary career has earned her numerous accolades, including the 2002 Robert Burns Fellowship and the 2009 Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Fiction. Her historical novel, As the Earth Turns Silver won the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Award for Fiction, making her the first – and still the only – Asian New Zealand writer to receive the country’s highest literary honour. This bestselling historical novel, which has been translated into several languages, captures the nuances of New Zealand’s social history and the Asian diaspora. Alison’s poetry collection Cup was shortlisted for the Jessie Mackay Award at the 2007 Montana NZ Book Awards, and her poetry has appeared in Best New Zealand Poems in 2015, 2007 and 2006. In 2021, she co-edited A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand – a landmark collection of poetry, fiction, and essays by emerging writers and the first-ever anthology of Asian New Zealand creative writing.

Alison participated in two writer residencies in China: a two-month residency in 2014 through the Michael King Writer’s Centre NZ-China Friendship Society Shanghai Writer’s Association and a one-month residency in 2016 at Sun Yat Sen University. In 2022, she received the State Library of Victoria Marion Orme Page Regional Fellowship to research and write about Cantonese goldseekers' journeys in the 1800s from Robe, South Australia, to the Victorian goldfields. These experiences feature in her upcoming book memoir, Journeys Home: A Memoir of Aotearoa, Australia and China.

As a child, Alison loved reading and writing but grew up without meeting a writer or reading books by Chinese or Asian writers, making a writing career seem unattainable. It wasn't until her thirties that she pursued her passion seriously. Recognising the lack of Chinese or Asian New Zealand writers in the 1990s and 2000s, she mentors emerging writers, particularly those from diverse backgrounds, drawing from her own transcultural experiences. 

Panel statement: “Alison is a lone star in the literature of Aotearoa New Zealand, lighting the way for other writers. Her writing speaks to the complex richness of our social history and diasporic experiences. As the Earth Turns Silver remains the only novel by an Asian New Zealand writer to win our national book award for fiction, a bestseller translated into multiple languages that has influenced the way we understand and read our own country. Imaginative, wise and accomplished, she’s also the most generous of mentors and most thoughtful of editors.”

Thank you to Corner Store for helping us tell these stories of impact, and to these contributors to the video: Aotearoa New Zealand Poet Laureate Chris Tse, and the National Library of NZ.