Writer In Conversation — Grace Yee / Chinese Fish

Writer In Conversation — Grace Yee about her book, Chinese Fish
Presented as part of Sydney Road Street Party
Sunday 2 March, 2:00-3:30 PM
correspondences Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country 39 Sydney Road Bulleke-bek (Brunswick) VIC

Join us for a conversation with Naarm/Melbourne-based writer, poet, and researcher Grace Yee to explore her debut poetry collection, Chinese Fish. Awarded the prestigious Victorian Prize for Literature in 2024, we know you will love Grace's book as much as we do. 

Chinese Fish is a family saga that spans the 1960s through to the 1980s. Narrated in multiple voices and laced with archival fragments and scholarly interjections, it offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of women and girls in a community that has historically been characterised as both a ‘yellow peril’ menace and an exotic ‘model minority’.

For this conversation with Grace, correspondences' Emma Thomson will be joined by Dr Selina Lo and Saskia Yeung. Please find our guest speaker's abbreviated biographies below. 

Bio 
Grace Yee is the author of Chinese Fish (Giramondo Publishing), winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature, the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry, and the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry, Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, in 2024. Her work has been widely published and anthologised in Australia and internationally, most recently in Meanjin, Griffith Review, and Best of Australian Poems 2024. Grace has been awarded the Patricia Hackett Prize, the Peter Steele Poetry Award, and a Creative Fellowship at the State Library Victoria, where she researched early settler Chinese Australian histories for her second collection Joss: A History, forthcoming with Giramondo Publishing in 2025. She lives in Melbourne, on Wurundjeri land.

Credit: Cover of Chinese Fish Giramondo Press 2023 © Grace Yee The text above is courtesy of the publisher. Photograph of Grace: Demelza Wong

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Guest panelists

Dr Selina Lo is the Executive Director of the Australian Global Health Alliance, a Naarm-based peak body for Australian global health organisations focused on promoting best practices in global health and advocacy. She is also a Consulting Editor (Global and Planetary Health Commissions) for The Lancet medical journal, where she was previously Senior Editor in London and Beijing. Prior to her editorial life, she was a humanitarian worker and clinician with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), leading medical humanitarian projects in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Thailand, Bangladesh, and China from 1996 to 2005. Selina was born and raised in Naarm. She occasionally writes art reviews for projects that explore intersections between art and global humanitarian health, justice and well-being.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Saskia Yeung is a Naarm/Melbourne-based creative and arts worker. Growing up in a bustling and restless city, she has found emerging herself in films and literature to be a form of meditation and escapism. Particularly, she is passionate about exploring the complexity of girlhood and Chinese cultural identity through art.

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Note:—
—1) We stock copies of the book in-store. Head to our online shop to pre-purchase your copy and collect it on the day.
—2) Tea/coffee is available to purchase on the day. Just ask one of our friendly team upon arrival.
—3) Our Writers In Conversation events are $10.  We also offer limited free tickets for those in need.
---4)  We do our best to offer a range of free and low-cost events. Donations for our community events are gratefully received. 

Acknowledgements 
We respectfully acknowledge the Sovereign Custodians of the land and waters upon which we live and work, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging. We extend this respect to all First Peoples.

Our work is supported by Arts Merri-Bek/Merri-Bek City Council.