One Tree Three Lives: One Tree Three Lives, an intimate film on the novelist Hualing Nieh Engle, who has been a major influence on generations of writers in the Chinese Diaspora, and beyond. The director has known the author and her family since the Seventies. The film reveals a woman of unusual charisma, integrity and determination, and a person in continual exile. She is the author of 24 books. She also co-founded the International Writing Program in Iowa, USA, with her now deceased husband, the poet Paul Engle. One Tree Three Lives is also their love story.