Dorothy Tse

Dorothy Tse Hiu-hung (Chinese: 謝曉虹, born 1977) is a Hong Kong author and an assistant professor of creative writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.^[1]

Writing career

Dorothy Tse writes primarily in Chinese. Her first book, So Black (《好黑》), was published in 2005. A Dictionary of Two Cities (《雙城辭典》), which she co-authored with Hon Lai-chu (韓麗珠), another Hong Kong writer, was published in 2013. Tse was awarded the 2013 Hong Kong Book Prize for A Dictionary of Two Cities.^[2] She had previously won the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature for So Black.^[3] Her literary prizes also include Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award and the Hong Kong Award for Creative Writing in Chinese.^[4]

Tse's first English short story, "Woman Fish",^[5] a surreal story about a man whose wife turns into a fish, appeared in 2013 in The Guardian. Her first full-length book in English, Snow and Shadow, was published in 2014 by Hong Kong publisher Muse. Snow and Shadow is a collection of short stories from her earlier Chinese books, as well as previously unpublished works, all translated by Nicky Harman.^[6]

Tse writes in a surrealist style. Her translator Nicky Harman describes her writing as: “surreal tales—fantastic in parts—but made the more effective for being grounded firmly in reality... Dreamscapes interlock with a narrative which, though superficially realistic, itself feels quite unreal.”^[7]

Tse is co-founder of the Hong Kong literary magazine Fleurs des lettres and attended The University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 2011.^[8]

References