Laurie Wen is an activist writing a nonfiction book about the democracy movement in Hong Kong, her hometown. Her writing on Hong Kong has appeared in outlets including The New York Times. Her desire to reach wide audiences on this issue led her to write a musical about four teenage girls who became frontline fighters in the 2019 Hong Kong uprising. Before beginning to write, she made documentaries. Her film, The Trained Chinese Tongue, is in the Criterion Channel collection. Now based in San Francisco, Laurie plays the accordion in the folk punk band Wayfairy.