Kōrero
Bright Fear, Chinese Fish and Backwaters

Named a Guardian Best Poetry Book of 2023, Hong Kong-born UK queer poet Mary Jean Chan’s collection Bright Fear navigates their parents coming to terms with their sexuality. Christchurch-raised Australian poet Grace Yee recently won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for her book Chinese Fish, which examines ideas of family and citizenship. And Emma Ling Sidnam’s 2024 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction longlisted novel Backwaters is a bittersweet look at belonging and Chinese heritage. They come together for a dynamic and wide-reaching conversation chaired by Nathan Joe.

This event is presented as part of Word Christchurch.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body

Emma Ling Sidnam is a Wellington-based writer and lawyer. As a fourth-generation Asian New Zealander, she is passionate about representation and ensuring that all voices are heard. She is an award-winning slam poet and her work has been published in The Spinoff, Capital, Newsroom and the anthologies A Clear Dawn and Middle Distance. In 2022, she was awarded the prestigious Michael Gifkins Prize for Backwaters.

Grace Yee is the author of Chinese Fish (Giramondo Publishing), winner of the Mary & Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and the Victorian Prize for Literature, in 2024. Her poetry has been widely published and anthologised across Australia and internationally, and has been awarded the Patricia Hackett Prize, the Peter Steele Poetry Award, and a Creative Fellowship at the State Library Victoria. Grace has taught in the creative writing programs at Deakin University and the University of Melbourne, where she completed a PhD on settler Chinese women’s storytelling in Aotearoa New Zealand. She lives in Melbourne, on Wurundjeri land.

Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche (Faber & Faber, 2019), which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for multiple prizes, including the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize. Bright Fear (Faber, 2023), Chan’s second book, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Writers’ Prize, and the Dylan Thomas Prize. In 2022, Chan co-edited the acclaimed anthology 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022) with Andrew McMillan. A judge for the 2023 Booker Prize, Chan is the 2023-24 Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge.

Nathan Joe 周润豪 is a Chinese-Kiwi playwright and performance poet based in Tāmaki Makaurau, though raised and deeply connected to Ōtautahi. He was the recipient of the 2021 Bruce Mason Playwriting Award and the 2020 National Poetry Slam Champion. His poetry short film, Nathan Joe: Homecoming Poems, commissioned by Going West Writers Festival, premiered internationally at the Toronto Queer Film Festival 2022. His best known work Scenes from a Yellow Peril premiered at the ASB Waterfront Theatre in 2022. He is also the curator behind DIRTY PASSPORTS, a BIPOC spoken word lineup show. He is currently developing a new work, A Short History of Asian New Zealand Theatre, which blends cultural criticism with personal essay in live performance.