Wena Poon

Wena Poon (方慧娜) is a lawyer and novelist based in the United States. She writes English-language fiction. Her work is studied by academics in the UK, US and Singapore as representative of the transnationalism of her generation.

Poon began writing novels and plays in her early teens. She obtained her degrees in English literature and law from Harvard University. She is a corporate finance lawyer by profession. Born and raised in Singapore, she has lived in Hong Kong, New York, Boston, San Francisco and Austin. Her family is of Chinese Teochew descent and has lived in Singapore for five generations. She speaks English, French, Mandarin, Teochew, Cantonese, Fujian, and reads Japanese script. These languages are sometimes used in her English-language fiction.

Since her first book was released in 2008, Poon has won the Willesden Herald Short Story Prize (UK), and has been nominated for the Frank O'Connor Award (Ireland), Le Prix Hemingway (France), the Bridport Prize in Poetry (UK), the Singapore Literature Prize, and the Popular Readers Award (Malaysia).

Lions in Winter (2007) portrays the Singapore Chinese diaspora in America, Canada, Australia and England. It is published in the US and Europe by Salt Publishing London and in Asia by MPH. It was a Straits Times best-seller in Singapore and was longlisted for the Frank O'Connor award in Ireland. It was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize.

In 2009, Poon released The Proper Care of Foxes. Using Voltaire's "Il fault cultiver notre jardin" as a theme, the stories take place in Singapore, Hanoi, Hong Kong, London, New York, and Palo Alto. The title story is about a high-flying young London banker who was laid off during the recession and his chance encounter with an old classmate from Malaysia. Published by Ethos Books, it earned her a second longlist nomination for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and another nomination for the Singapore Literature Prize.

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