Writer, spearfisher, and freediver Ting J. Yiu explores the intersection of environmental and cultural “water worlds” in her work, drawing connections between epic eel migrations, whale strandings, and fish hunting to mermaid ancestors, sea goddesses, and pirate queens. In this lunchtime seminar, she will read excerpts from her writing and discuss how she weaves memories, environmental criticism, folklore, and colonial history to reflect on a liminal life between worlds.
Comparing her family’s migratory journey—from China, Hong Kong, and New Zealand to Sweden, Norway, and beyond—to those of aquatic birds, mammals, and fish, Yiu uses writing and diving as ways to anchor herself against the fragmentary experience of diaspora. She will share insights on how intertidal zones of place and belonging shape her understanding of identity, home, and movement through the watery wild.
This seminar will be a conversation between Ting J. Yiu and Florence Durney. Bring your own lunch, coffee will be served!
Ting J. Yiu (姚敏婷) is a writer whose poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction explore the intersection of diaspora identities and environmental imaginaries. Her hybrid childhood in post-colonial Hong Kong, adolescence in New Zealand’s settler-indigenous bi-cultural space, and adulthood in Europe inform her enduring preoccupation with navigating liminal spaces in life and literature.
Her works have appeared in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Two Thirds North, Orientaliska Studier, among others. She was featured in A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2021) and selected for a nationwide literary tour. Her writing was also included in Lit: Stories from Home (OneTree House Publishing, 2021) as one of sixteen authors representing New Zealand’s literary canon.
Ting is the founder of The Writers’ Collective, where she leads creative writing workshops. A former environmental educator in New Zealand, she spent much of her time teaching in a wetsuit, submerged in oceans and rivers. Now based in Norway, she works as a Project Manager in the Department of Geography and Sociology at the University of Oslo and freelances as an academic editor. Whenever possible, she freedives and spearfishes, throwing feasts of hand-caught scallops and cod for friends.