Lynda Chanwai-Earle

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 in 1990 and a Diploma in Drama, 1994. Lynda also graduated with a Masters of Arts in Creative Writing at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters in 2006.

As a poet, filmmaker, playwright and actor, she has performed her work for over 15 years, producing various award winning theatre pieces including Alchemy and BoxRoleDream – nominated Outstanding New Theatre at the Chapman Tripp Awards, 2000. Her poems have been published widely in journals and anthologies and a collection Honeypants (Auckland University Press) was published in 1994. Honeypants was selected for the New Zealand Book Awards and shortlisted for the 1995 Penn 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 and performer for dramas created by women in prison. Lynda co-wrote and art directed Chinese Whispers a short film with MAP Productions 1996, and Co-Directed After a short film with Director Simon Raby in 2003. Lynda worked as a journalist for the television programme Asia Down Under (TVNZ Channel One). Lynda’s groundbreaking one-woman play Ka Shue (Letters Home) toured to Ireland in 1997 and Hawaii in 2004. Semi-autobiographical, Ka Shue is the first authentically New Zealand–Chinese play for mainstream audiences. Together with her second play, Foh-Sarn (Fire Mountain) it was published by The Women’s Play Press in 2003. Both plays are prescribed texts with the NCEA (National Certificates of Educational Achievement) and Victoria University. Ka-Shue has been published in Canada and Hawaii and is now in its third print. Nominated for two Chapman Tripp Awards, Lynda’s play Monkey premiered at the 2004 International Festival of the Arts and toured as part of Capital E National Children’s Theatre Programme. Lynda received the Circa Theatre Birthday Commission to write Heat. Set in Antarctica, about a love triangle between a woman, a man and a penguin, Heat was nominated for two Chapman Tripp Awards in 2008, winning the coveted Best Actor for the role of the penguin. She is currently working on her feature film script Little Dragon with Shadow Films, which received development funding from the NZ Film Commission in 2007.

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 2005 as guest writer. Lynda currently lives in Wellington, New Zealand with her partner and two young children.