Humanities Cultural Programme Visiting Fellowship Announcement

TORCH is delighted to announce that Dr Jennifer Wong will join as Humanities Cultural Programme Visiting Fellow from January 2022-December 2022.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Jennifer Wong is the author of several collections including 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press) and Diary of a Miu Miu Salesgirl (Bitter Melon Poetry). 回家 Letters Home has been named the PBS Wild Card Choice by Poetry Book Society. Jennifer studied at University College, Oxford and has earned a creative writing PhD from Oxford Brookes University. Her poems, translations and reviews have appeared in or are forthcoming from Wasafiri, Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Oxford Poetry, Magma Poetry, World Literature Today, The Rialto, PN Review, Asian Review of Books, Asian Cha, anthologies and others. She has taught at Poetry School, Oxford Brookes University, City Lit and Lingnan University of Hong Kong.

Jennifer was the writer-in-residence at Wasafiri in 2021. In collaboration with Wasafiri and other partners, she curated the first digital Poetics of Home Chinese Diaspora Poetry Festival 2021, funded by Arts Council. Since March 2020, she ran an online poetry reading series called What We Read Now which featured a diverse range of emerging and established poets. She is working on a book Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere in Contemporary Chinese Diaspora Poetry under contract with Bloomsbury.

During this Visiting Fellowship, Jennifer will offer a programme of activity for both university members as well as the wider Oxford community using creative writing to consider the meaning of home and of diasporic space, time, and materiality. Through workshops and events, Jennifer will encourage and guide participants to reflect on how objects and material culture create or challenge our sense of home, and how to express this in different forms of writing.

Jennifer says: 'I am very excited to connect with student groups and the wider local community in Oxford to embrace different notions of home through creative writing, tapping into material culture and personal history - particularly the experience of growing up in one home and now living in another. I am looking forward to developing new creative work and supporting participants to engage with cultural history, whatever their backgrounds.'

Full programme details coming soon.

Follow Jennifer on social media:

 @jennywcreative

 @jenniferwswong

Website: jenniferwong.co.uk