Xiaole Zhan

"Astounding for its originality and for the young author's clear-eyed maturity" - Lee Murray (on 'The Extinct')

A recipient of the 2018 NZSA Youth Mentorship Award (mentored by Ivy Alvarez), Xiaole Zhan is the winner of the National Schools Poetry Award 2019, first equal winner of the Sargeson Short Story Prize Secondary School Division 2019, and the first Featured Student Poet of 'a fine line' magazine. Her novella, 'The Extinct' (Phantom Feather Press, 2019), was published as the recipient of the Editor’s Choice Award in the Young NZ Writers Youth Laureate Prize, and her essay 'In Defence of Confusion: Love, Adolescence, and Shakespeare’s Zoo of Humanity' placed first equal in the SGCNZ/ Ida Gaskin Shakespeare Essay Competition with English at Otago. Recently, her poem 'Sympathetic Resonance' was displayed on Ross Island, Antarctica, as part of the International Antarctic Poetry Exhibition. Born in China, Xiaole Zhan grew up in New Zealand where her memories have accumulated and assembled into the growing story she tells herself today.