Nina Mingya Powles' new book of poetry Magnolia , has been shortlisted for the 2021 Ockham Book Awards. It reflects on Nina's experiences as a Malaysian-Chinese-Pakeha woman who doesn't easily fit in, either in New Zealand or China. She wrote the poems while living in Shanghai, where she went to study Mandarin for 18 months. But it was also an opportunity to reconnect with the city where she'd lived for several years as a teenager. As well as poetry, Nina is a zinemaker, essayist and the founding editor of Bitter Melon , a very small press that publishes limited-edition pamphlets by Asian poets. She's currently back in Aotearoa to launch Magnolia . She reads from the collection, and talks with Lynn Freeman about some of its themes.. Magnolia is published by Seraph Press, and it's shortlisted for the 2021 Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry as part of the Ockham Book Awards.