Zhang Er
Professor Zhang Er is a biologist and artist who teaches at Evergreen State College. As a writer, she has published numerous works as a poet and librettist. Her most recent project, “Tacoma Method,” is an opera centered on the 1885 expulsion of Tacoma’s Chinese-American community. In this interview, she discusses her upbringing during China’s Cultural Revolution, the roots of her interest in writing and literature, and using nineteenth-century Tacoma as the setting of her opera.