Lynda Chanwai-Earle

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Lynda Chanwai-Earle is a fourth-generation Chinese New Zealander with a background in the arts and public broadcasting. Over the last three decades Lynda’s award-winning poetry and plays have been published, produced and toured in national festivals and abroad.

Lynda’s first book of poetry Honeypants (Auckland University Press, 1994) was a finalist for Best First Book of Poetry for the Pen Book Awards and shortlisted for the New Zealand Book Awards in 1994.

Lynda’s ground-breaking one-woman play Ka-Shue (Letters Home) premiered at Circa Theatre in 1996, during the International Festival of the Arts, Wellington. Semi-autobiographical, Ka-Shue was the first authentically New Zealand–Chinese play for mainstream audiences. Ka-Shue (Letters Home) has published and toured internationally.

Lynda toured across the country with Director Jim Moriarty and the Maori theatre group Te Rakau Hua O Te Wao Tapu to prisons, marae and schools from 1995 to 2000 and was involved as a script coordinator and performer for dramas created by women in prison.

Lynda represented New Zealand at the inaugural Hong Kong Literary Festival in 2001 and the Shanghai Literary Festival in 2005. Inaugural New Zealand Writer in Residence at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou in 2015, Lynda has been short-listed three times for the Bruce Mason Playwrights Award.

Set in Antarctica, Lynda’s award-winning play HEAT is a love story between a man, a woman and a penguin. HEAT toured arts festivals around New Zealand in 2010 to 2011. Also touted as a ground-breaking interface between science and the arts, HEAT was the world’s first green powered play to perform inside festival venues off-the-grid.

Lynda’s play Man in a Suitcase (SHIFT, Playmarket, 2016) was based on the real-life murder of Chinese student Wan Biao in Auckland, 2006. It was a case that shocked the nation. Man in a Suitcase was an international theatre collaboration between The Court Theatre, Christchurch and Peking University, Beijing, China. Man in a Suitcase premiered at The Court Theatre in 2012 and toured to Beijing the same year. Lynda was Playwright in Residence at Peking University when the Government of the People’s Republic of China censored and shut down her play.

Lynda’s work in public broadcasting spans almost two decades, in 2018 she was the Presenter of Radio New Zealand’s Voices programme. A highlight of her time with RNZ includes her documentary podcast series Flying Solo (what it takes to be a solo parent in New Zealand), making finalist for Best Documentary and Outstanding contribution to broadcasting in the 2018 New Zealand Radio Awards.

Lynda was awarded the prestigious 2019 Writer in Residence at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. During her tenure Lynda has co-written The Only Son with acclaimed screenwriter John Banas. The Only Son was a tele-feature in development with Screentime New Zealand and is also based on the murder of Chinese student Wan Biao. Lynda is developing HOLE and HEART, the companion pieces to HEAT, in her Antarctic Theatre Trilogy and collaborating once again with many of the outstanding arts and science practitioners that created HEAT. HOLE will be green-powered and had its development season with The Women’s Theatre Festival at Circa Theatre, 2020 and will premiere for its full season at Circa in Nov-Dec 2021.

For more information, see Lynda's bio on the Playmarket website.

Auckland University Press

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Lynda Chanwai-Earle

Lynda Chanwai-Earle

honeypants