On Wednesday 5 April from 11.30am to 12.30pm, join our live videoconference
WordSpace: Writing from a Non-European Perspective
Join Tze Ming Mok and Tusiata Avia in a discussion about writing from a non-European perspective. WordSpace is a series of videoconference discussions between secondary school students and leading New Zealand writers, brought to you by the New Zealand Book Council and CWA New Media. To participate, your school will need to be a member of the Book Council.
The session will consider questions such as what effect Eurocentric writing has had on non-European readers and the writers will talk about how their life experiences shape their writing.
Tze Ming Mok
Tze Ming Mok is a poet, fiction writer and essayist concerned with displaced lives. A New Zealand Chinese of migrant parents, she was born in Auckland. Tze Ming’s poems and stories have been published in literary journals including Landfall, Sport, Poetry NZ, Meanjin, JAAM and The Listener.
In 2004 Tze Ming’s poem ‘An Arabic Poetry Lesson in Jakarta’ was selected as one of the Best New Zealand Poems 2004. Her essay ‘Race You There’, an examination of what it means to be Asian in New Zealand, won the Landfall Essay Competition, and appears in Great New Zealand Argument: Ideas about ourselves (2005). A short story ‘Daily Special’ appears in The Best New Zealand Fiction Volume 2, edited by Fiona Kidman (2005).
Tze Ming is often described as a new critical voice from the New Zealand Chinese communities. In 2004 she led an anti-racist march to Parliament in response to hate crimes in Wellington. She has worked as a refugee status officer and refugee legal advisor. She is currently editing the May issue of Landfall, and will soon begin writing a column for the Sunday Star Times.
Tusiata Avia
Donna Tusiata Avia is a poet, a performer, and children’s book writer. Avia is of Samoan descent, and her name, Tusiata, means both word painter and artist.
Tusiata Avia’s poetry has appeared in various literary journals including Turbine, Sport, and Takahe. Her radio drama You Say Hawaii will be broadcast in 2002. She also works as a performance poet. Her solo show Wild Dogs Under My Skirt premiered at the 2002 Dunedin Fringe Festival.
Tusiata is publishing a series of books for children. The first two, Mele and the Fofo (2002) and The Song (2002), have been published in Samoan, Tongan, Cook Islands Māori, Nuiean and Tokelauan and English. Her book of poetry, Wild Dogs Under My Skirt was published in 2004. She was also awarded the 2005 Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writers’ Residency at the University of Hawai’i, and has been short listed for the 2006 Prize in Modern Letters.
TO REGISTER FOR THIS VIDEO-CONFERENCE, CONTACT digitalconversations@cwa.co.nz BY MONDAY 28 MARCH 2006.
Telephone: (04) 382 6506
The Book Council will be creating a DVD of this session, which will be available for schools to purchase. If your school takes part in the session, please be aware that we will need signed permission forms from all participating students.
