Lessons: English conversation

Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a poet, literary translator and musician. She writes and translates in English, French, and Chinese and is the author of several poetry collections and most recently a novel in stories, Dear Chrysathemums, published by Scribner in 2023. Longlisted for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the novel celebrates diversity and women and features deeply compelling Asian women who reckon with the past, violence, and exile—set in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Paris, and New York. Fiona lives in Paris and we were thrilled to welcome her in February to the Book Room, where she talked about her novel. If you missed her event, you can read the questions we asked and Fiona’s answers below: Bill & Rosa: You are a musician and a poet, you have published several collections of poems, I was wondering what was the determining factor in your decision to write a novel? Was it a character, or a story that you felt needed to be told? Fiona Sze-…

Are You Becoming French?The French say that foreigners can never truly “become” French - no matter what legal status is inscribed upon what identity papers they carry around in their France-based wallets (1). Nor might newly minted citizens or official residents wish to swap their own cultural markers, manners and mentalities for those of the local waiter who serves them their morning café au lait et croissant (to say nothing of totally being able to). But if you’re here long enough, your adaptation mirrors those Escher drawings where columns of black geese or fish on the left fly or swim straight across the page, migrating and mutating by imperceptible degrees, melting into and finally becoming their white counterparts on the right. To a greater or lesser degree, whether you expected to or not, one day you realize that you’re crossing to the other side. How do you know that you’ve arrived? When you (a very incomplete list): 1. sound as brilliantly amusing-funny-sarcastic-sn…

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Interview with Fiona Sze-Lorrain

Are You Becoming French?

BILL & ROSA's BOOK ROOM