Join us to celebrate the launch of the brand new Chinese Language poetry collection at Manchester Poetry Library.

Hosted by Manchester Metropolitan University, the event will include readings from three exciting UK-based poets of contrasting Chinese heritages – Kit Fan, Jennifer Lee Tsai and Natalie Linh Bolderston; with work which explores and interrogates urgent questions on race, identity, myth, narrative, the effects of inter-generational trauma, loss, language inheritance and estrangement.

Following the readings, there will be time for a Q&A with each poet.

Curated by Jennifer Lee Tsai, our new Chinese Language poetry collection was created especially for the auspices of the library. This unique event will be introduced by Martin Kratz, Project Manager for the Manchester Poetry Library.

The poets:

Kit Fan is a novelist, poet, and critic. As Slow As Possible, his second poetry collection, was a Poetry Society Recommendation and The Irish Times Book of the Year. Diamond Hill, his debut novel about Hong Kong, will be published by Dialogue Books/Little, Brown in May 2021. He was shortlisted twice for the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize and a winner of Northern Writers Award, Times Stephen Spender Poetry Translation Prize, Hong Kong University International Poetry Prize, and POETRY’s Editors Prize for Reviewing.  www.kitfan.net | twitter: @Kit_Fan_ | Insta: kit_fan_

Natalie Linh Bolderston is a Vietnamese-Chinese-British poet. In 2019, she was a runner-up in the BBC Proms Poetry Competition and came third in the National Poetry Competition. In 2020, she received an Eric Gregory Award and co-won the Rebecca Swift Women Poets’ Prize. She is a member of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective and the 2020–21 London Library Emerging Writers Programme. Her pamphlet, The Protection of Ghosts, is published with V. Press. She is now working on her first full-length collection. Find Natalie on Instagram: @NatalieLinhBolderston and Twitter: @NatBolderston

Jennifer Lee Tsai is a poet, editor and critic. She was born in Bebington and grew up in Liverpool. Jennifer is a fellow of The Complete Works, a Ledbury Poetry Critic and Contributing Editor to Ambit. Her work is published in the Bloodaxe anthology Ten: Poets of the New Generation (2017) and her debut poetry pamphlet is Kismet (ignitionpress, 2019). Jennifer was awarded a 2019 AHRC scholarship to undertake doctoral research in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool. She is the winner of a Northern Writers Award for Poetry 2020. Find Jennifer on Instagram: @JenniferLeeTsai, Twitter: @JenniferLeeTsai