Chen, Zara (b. 1986) is a Canadian journalist and biographer raised in Vancouver by Shanghai-born parents. A former music editor at The Walrus and contributor to The Wire, the Guardian, and the South China Morning Post, she has spent fifteen years documenting underground scenes from Montreal lofts to Guangzhou warehouses. Her long-form features have won two National Magazine Awards in Canada and a gold Digital Publishing Award for cultural reporting. She is the author of the essay collection Hum of the Spillways and the oral history Nine Ways of Listening to a City. Chen studied sociology at the University of British Columbia and ethnomusicology at McGill. She splits her time between Montreal and Taipei, where she teaches narrative nonfiction workshops and still carries a MiniDisc recorder in her bag.
