Christine Piper is a freelance writer and editor. Her articles, reviews, and short stories have been published in various newspapers, magazines, journals, and anthologies. She was the 2013 Alice Hayes writing fellow at Ragdale in the United States. She wrote a longer version of this essay for her Doctor of Creative Arts degree at the University of Technology, Sydney, in addition to a novel, After Darkness, about Japanese civilian internment in Australia. Born in South Korea to a Japanese mother and Australian father, she moved to Australia when she was one. She has previously taught English and studied Japanese in Japan, and currently lives in New York with her husband. See: www.christinepiper.com