Chris Tse (New Zealand writer)

Chris Tse (born 1982) is a New Zealand poet and writer.^[1][2]

Background[]

Tse was born in 1982 in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. He is of Chinese heritage, which is the subject of some of his work. He studied film and English literature at Victoria University of Wellington, where he also completed a Master of Arts degree in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters.^[1][2]

Tse lives and works in Wellington.^[1][3]

Works[]

The major themes of Tse's writing include identity, his Chinese heritage and the experiences of Chinese immigrants to New Zealand in the twentieth century.^[4][5]

Tse's first appearance in a major publication was the joint collection AUP New Poets 4 (with Harry Jones and Erin Scudder), published by Auckland University Press in 2011).^[6] Tse's section in the book, "Sing Joe", recounts his great-grandfather's immigration to New Zealand at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as Tse's own return to China as an adult.^[6][7]

In 2014, Auckland University Press published Tse's first full-length collection, How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes.^[8] The collection is a book-length sequence that revisits the 1905 murder of Joe Kum Yung at the hands of the racist Lionel Terry. How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes was a finalist in the poetry category at the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, where it won the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry.^[9][8][10]

Tse's second collection, He's So MASC, was published by Auckland University Press in March 2018.^[11] The collection explores themes of identity, sexuality and pop culture.^[5][12][13]

Awards[]

• New Zealand Listener/New Zealand Chinese Association Short Story Prize (2009) - "At Two Speeds"^[1]
• Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry (2016) - How to Be Dead in a Year of Snakes^[9][8]

References[]