Fiona Cheong was born in Singapore in 1961. Her first novel, Scent of the Gods published by W.W. Norton in 1991, takes place in Singapore during the political upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The novel conveys what Cheong calls "that particular tension felt by girls of Chinese ancestry who must learn how to be both ‘good women’ and ‘good citizens.’" Cheong’s work also appears in Jessica Hagedorn’s Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Literature. She has taught writing at Cornell University and Howard University, and is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. She is working on her second novel, Shadow Theatre. [extracted from 1995 brochure]