A moving talk by the Chinese-American novelist Amy Tan kicked off Bradford's seven-week celebration of literature.

Reading the City, the Bradford Literature Festival, got under way with an introduction from the Lord Mayor of Bradford, Councillor Stanley King, at the Pictureville Cinema.

A 200-strong audience was in town to hear Amy read from her new novel in a rare appearance in this country - it was one of only three appearances by her in Britain this year.

She told an audience how the death of her mother Daisy at 83 had led her to drastically rewrite the Bonesetter's Daughter, her latest work.

And she introduced a screening of The Joy Luck Club, the film made of her best-known novel.

The literature festival - sponsored by the Telegraph & Argus and which will see appearances in Bradford by Bront expert Juliet Barker, Keith Waterhouse and home grown poet Joolz - was officially launched by Councillor King.

"I have loved literature for as long as I can remember and am a fairly avid reader," he said. He added that he wrote non-fiction himself and currently had a book at number two in the top ten non fiction titles at Waterstone's in Bradford - but that he relished the chance to meet an author "both popular and respected" like Amy Tan.

Cutting a petite and stylish figure in a long black coat dress and clutching a Prada handbag, the writer held the audience with a heartfelt account of the death of her beloved mother from Alzheimer's Disease.

She said she had already spent five years writing the Bonesetter's Daughter but the process of piecing together her mother's obituary had prompted her to rewrite the whole thing in six months. "I was changed and I saw the world differently," she said. "The death of my mother transformed my writing."

Her mother, who had four husbands and five children, was born in China and emigrated to the USA, where she worked as a nurse and amassed a portfolio of stocks and shares by getting Amy to predict the best buys using a ouija board.

Visiting Yorkshire was a thrill because it reminded her "of my children", Amy Tan said - meaning her two Yorkshire Terriers. "After my fiction, my husband and my family, they are my passion. It was a thrill to go by Huddersfield which is where one of the first Yorkshire Terriers came from."