Poetry Cafe New Zealand
Hello Poetry Lovers
Our guest for March will be multi-talented writer and performer Lynda Chanwai Earle is a fourth-generation Chinese New Zealander. Born in London in 1965 she spent her early childhood in Papua New Guinea before completing her education in New Zealand. She studied creative writing with Albert Wendt and graduated from the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Diploma in Drama.As a jazz poet, performance artist, filmmaker, playwright and actor, she has performed her work for over 15 years. She has produced various award winning performance pieces and was commissioned to produce a celebration of Women's Suffrage in 1993. Her poems have been published widely in journals and anthologies and a collection Honeypants (AUP) was published in 1994. Honeypants was selected for the 1995 Penn Book Awards and New Zealand Book Awards.
Lynda toured with Te Rakau Hua O Te Wao Tapu to prisons, marae and schools from 1995 to 1999, and has been involved as a script co-ordinator, drama facilitator and performer for dramas created by women in prison.
Lynda's groundbreaking one-woman play Ka Shue ("Letters Home") was selected to represent Aotearoa New Zealand at the 1997 International Women Playwrights' Conference in Ireland. It is the first authentically New Zealand-Chinese play for mainstream audiences and is semi-autobiographical. Together with her second play, Fire Mountain ("Foh-Sarn"), it was published by Women's Play Press in 2003. Both plays are prescribed texts in New Zealand Literature at the University of Auckland. Ka-Shue was recently reprinted in Manoa, University of Hawaii Press. She has two new plays, one of which, Monkey, premiered at the 2004 International Festival of the Arts and toured as part of Capital E National Children's Theatre Programme. Monkey weaves contemporary issues of school bullying into the mythology surrounding the Chinese classic Monkey and explores being an Asian child at school in New Zealand. Her other new play, Heat, for which she received the 1-year Circa Theatre Birthday Commission, is scheduled for production in 2007. Lynda was Co-writer and Art Director on Chinese Whispers a short film with MAP Productions 1996, and Co-Director on After a short film with Simon Raby 2003. She has worked as a journalist for the television programme Asia Down Under (TVNZ Channel One) and recently completed study for her MA in screenwriting with Victoria University's International Institute of Modern Letters. Other current projects include writing a feature film Doctor, Doctor...! with G.A.P. Productions.
Lynda represented New Zealand at the inaugural Hong Kong Literary Festival in 2001, the 2002 Philippines Asia-Pacific Poetry Conference, was Trans-Tasman writer at the 2003 Queensland Poetry Festival and attended the Shanghai Literary Festival in March 2005 as guest writer. Lynda currently lives in Wellington.
"Don't forget FREE ENTRY & GREAT PRIZES available for poets on our popular
OPEN MIC"
Where and when:
> Monday 12 March, 7.30pm
> Cruz Cafe & Bar
>Serlby Street, Poriua (opposite Countdown, next door to Video Shop)
