[9] She speaks English, French, Mandarin, Teochew, Cantonese and Hokkien [clarification needed] and reads Japanese script.
Using Voltaire's "Il fault cultiver notre jardin" as a theme, the stories take place in Singapore, Hanoi, Hong Kong, London, New York, and Palo Alto.
The title story is about a high-flying young London banker who was laid off during the recession and his chance encounter with an old classmate from Malaysia.
[17] In 2013, Poon released Maxine, Aoki, Beto + Me, her third short fiction collection featuring stories and her black and white photographs from around the world.
Most of the stories have been previously published in international literary anthologies[18] and journals in 2010–2012, including "The Architects", winner of the Willesden Herald Prize in London[19] and "Dialogue Between Novillera and Minotaur", shortlisted for the Prix Hemingway in France.
[21] A short story spinoff from Alex y Robert, Dialogue Between Novillera & Minotaur, was translated in French and performed in the ancient Roman amphitheater in Nimes, France.
It was shortlisted for France's Hemingway Prize and later published by Avocats du Diable in a French anthology called Pas De Deux (September 2011).
Poon incorporated Teochew opera in her latest English play The Wood Orchid, which was performed at Westminster Abbey, London, as part of the Bush Theatre's October 2011 project "Sixty Six Books".
Set in 1948 Kyoto, the novel is about the American occupation of Japan and the relationship between an Allied administrator, Kate Schroeder, and her young Japanese driver, Nakamura Shinji.
In 2012–2015, Poon wrote a trilogy of Chinese-Japanese sword-fighting novels[29] as a humorous, modern response to classical Ming plays, Kun opera, wuxia television shows, and samurai films.
[31] The New Straits Times compared Biophilia to the works of film director Terry Gilliam in its book review.
Poon graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University with an honours degree in English Literature.
[35] In 2011, she was awarded a writer's residency by French literary press Avocats du Diable in the bullfighting region of southern France.