Chiew-Siah Tei
Encyclopedia
Biography
Tei was born and grew up in TampinTampin
Tampin is both a town and a district in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia, however part of the town spills over into the neighbouring state of Malacca, as it is located along the Malacca-Negeri Sembilan border...
, southern Malaysia, and published her first work in the 1980s. During the 1990s she published prose and commentary in journals including Sin Chew Jit Poh
Sin Chew Jit Poh
Sin Chew Daily （formerly known as Sin Chew Jit Poh）, is a leading Chinese-language newspaper in Malaysia. According to report from the Audit Bureau of Circulation for the period ending 30 June 2009, Sin Chew Daily has an average daily circulation of some 400,000 copies...
and Nanyang Siang Pao, winning nominations and several awards - including the Hua Zong International Chinese Fiction Award and the National Prose Writing Competition - for her Chinese language prose. In 2002 Tei was nominated the Best Prose Writer of the year. Her first novel, Little Hut of Leaping Fishes, was long-listed for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize
Man Asian Literary Prize
The Man Asian Literary Prize, founded in 2007, is an annual literary award given to the best novel by an Asian writer, either written in English or translated into English, and published in the previous calendar year...
in 2007.
In 2002 she moved to Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
and enrolled to study film and creative writing at Glasgow University.
Books
- Little Hut of Leaping Fishes, Picador, 2008
- It's Snowing (Chinese language), Orion Group, 1998: prose collection recounting her life as an outsider in Scotland
- Secrets and Lies (Chinese language), Mentor Publishing, 2000: collected arts and film reviews.
Film and Theatre
Tei's screenplay Night Swimmer was made into a feature film that won Best Short Film at France's Vendôme International Film Festival 2000.In 2005 her play Three Thousand Troubled Threads was staged at the Edinburgh International Festival
Edinburgh International Festival
The Edinburgh International Festival is a festival of performing arts that takes place in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, over three weeks from around the middle of August. By invitation from the Festival Director, the International Festival brings top class performers of music , theatre, opera...
.