Dear Chrysanthemums, With Fiona Sze-lorrain

Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a a writer, poet, translator, editor, and zheng harpist who writes and translates in English, French, and Chinese.  Tonight she will mainly be reading from her new novel, Dear Chrysanthemums. 

Composed of several interconnected stories, each taking place in a year ending with the number six, ironically a number that in Chinese divination signifies “a smooth life,” Dear Chrysanthemums is a novel about the scourge of inhumanity, survival, and past trauma that never leaves. The women in these stories are cooks, musicians, dancers, protestors, mothers and daughters, friends and enemies, all inexplicably connected in one way or another. The stories are set in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Paris and New York.

Fiona Sze-Lorrain is the author five books of poetry, most recently Rain in Plural and The Ruined Elegance from Princeton, and fifteen books of translation, including Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm by Yu Xiuhua from Astra House. She lives in France. www.fionasze.com

Refreshments included