Aotearoa Writers to Read in the Year of the Dragon
For Lunar New Year Chris Tse has curated a selection of books by Aotearoa writers of Asian descent.
Read Chris’s editorial about this selection how to be well read in a year of dragons and find out more information about each book, below.
Our thanks to Allan Xia for his stunning artwork.
Fiction
A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand
This landmark collection of poetry, fiction and essays by emerging writers is the first-ever anthology of Asian New Zealand creative writing.
Editors: Paula Morris and Alison Wong
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409470
RRP: $59.99
Released: May 2021
Paperback
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Despatches | Grotesque: Monster Stories
Two books by horror maestro Lee Murray. World War II novella Despatches and short story collection Grotesque Monster Stories.
Author: Lee Murray
Publisher: Absinthe Books (PS Publishing) | Things in the Well Publishing
ISBN: 9781803943220 (Despatches)
Released: September 2023 (Despatches) | July 2022 (Grotesque Monster Stories)
Hardback (Despatches) | ebook (Grotesque Monster Stories)
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Backwaters
Laura, a 4th generation Chinese New Zealander, navigates the tides of trying to find herself in her twenties and begins to uncover the life stories of her parents, grandparents and great great grandfather who emigrated from China as a market gardener. ‘Warm and satisfying’.
Author: Emma Ling Sidnam
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 9781922790422
RRP: $38
Released: September 2023
Paperback
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Foul Lady Fortune | Immortal Longings
Two books by international bestselling author Chloe Gong. In Foul Lady Fortune an ill-matched pair of spies pose as a couple to investigate a series of murders in 1930s Shanghai. Immortal Longings is Gong’s latest and first novel for adults.
Author: Chloe Gong
Publisher: Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand
ISBN: 9781529380309 | 9781399700436
RRP: $24.99 | $37.99
Released: June 2023 | July 2023
Paperback
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Poetry
Chinese Fish
Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature 2024, Chinese Fish is a family saga that spans the 1960s through to the 1980s.
Author: Grace Yee
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing
ISBN: 9781922725448
RRP: $29.99
Released: June 2023
Paperback
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Anomalia
A visceral and intelligent poetry debut, anomalia casts poetry as scientific investigation. Populated with strange specimens, cicada husks and glittering gems, these poems explore the love and cruelty in human nature.
Author: Cadence Chung
Publisher: Tender Press
ISBN: 9780473623043
RRP: $25
Released: May 2022
Paperback
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People Person
A collection of adventurous, funny and dissonant poems about the endless work of fitting in when the goalposts are constantly changing.
Author: Joanna Cho
Publisher: Te Herenga Waka University Press
ISBN: 9781776920068
RRP: $30
Released: October 2022
Paperback
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Magnolia 木蘭
Powles uses every sense to take us on a journey through cities, food and even time, weaving her story with the stories of women from history, myth and film.
Author: Nina Mingya Powles
Publisher: Seraph Press
ISBN: 9780995108257
RRP: $30
Released: November 2020
Paperback
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Under Glass
Gregory Kan’s second book is a dialogue between a series of prose poems, following a protagonist through a mysterious and threatening landscape, and a series of verse poems, driven by the speaker’s compulsive hunger to make sense of things.
Author: Gregory Kan
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869408916
RRP: $24.99
Released in New Zealand: 2019
Paperback
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AUP New Poets 8 | AUP New Poets 6
In AUP New Poets 8, Lily Holloway, Tru Paraha and Modi Deng produce a volume of remarkable inventions and intoxications. AUP New Poets 6 includes selections from the poetry of Ben Kemp, Vanessa Crofskey and Chris Stewart.
Editor: Anna Jackson
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409456 | 9781869409098
Released: September 2021 | March 2020
Paperback
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Non-fiction and memoir
Modern Chinese
An accessible and charming breakdown of classic Chinese dishes. ‘A love letter to food culture, family and queerness.’
Author: Sam Low
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
RRP: $49.99
ISBN: 9781991006394
Released: October 2023
Hardback
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I Love My Stupid Life
Biting, pungent, salty and – yes – sweet, too, this is the true story of Albert Cho’s life in food and the paramount place of food in his life.
Authors: Albert Cho
Publisher: Penguin Books NZ
RRP: $45
ISBN: 9780143779506
Released: November 2022
Hardback
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Small Bodies of Water
Nina Mingya Powles first learned to swim in Borneo —where her mother was born and her grandfather studied freshwater fish. There, the local swimming pool became her first body of water. A lyrical, poetic essay collection.
Author: Nina Mingya Powles
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
RRP: $27.99
ISBN: 9781838852184
Released: August 2022
All Who Live on Islands
Rose Lu takes readers on a personal history – a shopping trip with her Shanghai-born grandparents, her career in the Wellington tech industry, an epic hike through the Himalayas – to explore friendship, the weight of stories told and not told about diverse cultures, and the reverberations of our parents’ and grandparents’ choices.
Author: Rose Lu
Publisher: Te Herenga Waka University Press
ISBN: 9781776562893
RRP: $30
Released: October 2019
Paperback
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When We Remember to Breathe
Two courageous Kiwi women, one an author and the other a paediatrician, lay bare the raw joy, beauty, discomfort and humour of modern motherhood.
Author: Michele Powles and Renee Liang
Publisher: Magpie
RRP: $25
ISBN: 9780473453398
Released: April 2019
Paperback
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For younger readers
Hurrah for Yum Cha! | Bang Bang Noodles
Two bilingual English and Cantonese language board books for young children.
Author: Nessie Sharpe
Publisher: Nessie Sharpe
RRP: $20
ISBN: 9780473523251
Released: 2022
Board Book
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4 Yaks and a Yeti
High in the foothills of the Himalayas, a young Nepalese boy, Lhakpa, and his four loyal yaks embark on a perilous journey to find the mythical castle, Shangri-La.
Author/illustrator: Peter Hillary and Ant Sang
Publisher: Bateman Books
RRP: $29.99
ISBN: 9781776890095
Released: October 2022
Hardback
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Lizard’s Tale
A thief. A spy. A mysterious codebook. And a whole lot of trouble. It’s 1940 and World War II is being fought in faraway Europe. Lizard doesn’t know much about that. He lives in Singapore’s Chinatown, surviving on odd jobs and petty theft.
Author: Weng Wai Chan
Publisher: Text Publishing
RRP: $21
ISBN: 9781925603910
Released: July 2019
Paperback
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Lonesome When You Go | Learning to Love Blue
In Lonesome When You Go Paige finds that, in the build-up to the Rockfest, she can’t control everything in her life, no matter how hard she practises and how loud she plays. In Learning to Love Blue Paige and her bass guitar arrive in Melbourne…
Author: Saradha Kohls
Publisher: Mākaro Press | Record Press
RRP: $20
ISBN: 9780994123749 | 9780645199307
Released: 2016 | 2021
Paperback
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Learning to Love Blue | Lonesome When You Go
The Last Fallen Moon | The Last Fallen Star | The Last Fallen Realm
The internationally bestselling Gifted Clans trilogy. Graci Kim intertwines Korean mythology with a tale of the bonds between sisters.
Author: Graci Kim
Publisher: Penguin Random House
RRP: $21 (books 1 and 2 in paperback) | $37 (book 3 hardback)
ISBN: 9781368061278 | 9781368073158 | 9781368073165
Released: May 2021 | June 2022 | August 2023
Paperback and hardback
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Books to look forward to — released in 2024
Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud
Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud won the 2023 NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize. A series of interconnected narrative prose-poems re-imagined from real-life narratives of the Chinese women’s diaspora in Aotearoa and linked through the classic mythology of the Chinese shapeshifting nine-tailed fox spirit, húli jīng.
Author: Lee Murray
Publisher: Cuba Press
RRP: $28
ISBN: 9781988595771
Releasing: April 2024
Paperback
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Bound Memoir of Making and Remaking
Structured as a series of sewing projects, in this lyrical memoir each handmade garment charts the author’s navigation of changing relationships, careers and ambitions, and her shifting sense of self.
Author: Maddie Ballard
Publisher: The Emma Press
Releasing: October 2024
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