Credit: Bill Grimshaw

Denise Chong’s latest book is Egg on Mao, a story of human rights in China, which examines the life and fate of Lu Decheng, a bus mechanic who defiantly defaced Mao’s iconic portrait during the Tiananmen protests in 1989. Acclaimed for her ability to weave personal stories into their complex social context, Denise’s previous books are the award-winning memoir, The Concubine’s Children, one of the first book-length non-fiction narratives of the early Chinese in Canada and a Globe and Mail bestseller for 93 weeks, and The Girl in the Picture, about the napalm girl made famous by a haunting news photograph taken during the Vietnam War. Before her writing life, Denise, trained as an economist, went on to serve as senior economic advisor in the office of then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the 1980s. Married to a television journalist, she lives in Ottawa.