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Jessie Tu Jessie Tu i(A147695 works by)
Gender: Female
Heritage: Taiwanese ; Chinese
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BiographyHistory

Jessie Tu is a music teacher who has lived in Bondi and taught full time at the Rose Bay independent girls school Kambala.

She was born to a Taiwanese mother and Chinese father. At the age of five, she immigrated to Melbourne, Australia, and then to Sydney. She studied music at university, having played the violin from the age of nine.

Tu's poetry deals with her identity growing up as an immigrant and the shift from childhood to adulthood. She received a six month residency as a Café Poet (a program funded by the government assisted Australian Poetry Organization) at her favourite café in Sydney, WellCo Café in Glebe.

In December 2011, she participated in a National Young Playwrights' Studio workshop where a selected few young Australians from across the nation came together with industry leaders to write, learn and create new works.

In 2020, she released her debut novel, A Lonely Girl Is a Dangerous Thing, following a former child violin prodigy.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon A Lonely Girl Is a Dangerous Thing Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2020 19295097 2020 single work novel

'Jena Chung plays the violin. She was once a child prodigy and is now addicted to sex. She's struggling a little. Her professional life comprises rehearsals, concerts, auditions and relentless practice; her personal life is spent managing family demands, those of her creative friends, and lots of sex. And then she meets Mark—much older and worldly-wise—who bewitches her. Could this be love? When Jena wins an internship with the New York Philharmonic, she thinks the life she has dreamed of is about to begin. But when Trump is elected, New York changes irrevocably and Jena along with it. She comes to learn that there are many different ways to live and love and that no one has the how-to guide for any of it—not even her indomitable mother.

'A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing unflinchingly explores the confusion of having expectations upturned, and the awkwardness and pain of being human in our increasingly dislocated world—and how, in spite of all this, we still try to become the person we want to be. It is a dazzling, original and astounding debut from a young writer with a fierce, intelligent and fearless new voice.

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2021 shortlisted Colin Roderick Award
2021 winner The Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist of the Year
2021 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Multicultural NSW
2021 longlisted The Stella Prize
2021 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) The Matt Richell Award for New Writer
2021 winner Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year
2021 shortlisted Indie Awards Debut Fiction
2020 shortlisted Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction
Another Country 2017 single work prose
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , December no. 21 2017; Southerly , vol. 78 no. 2 2018; (p. 179-186)

'As though it were a competition, as though you could measure love, put it on a scale, graph it, draw charts and predict growth or recession. Calculable. Everything was measurable. He felt the need to quantify things. Everything had currency, as long as you knew where to look, how to decipher it in numerical components. That was how he saw the world and the world saw it fit to bend to his will. After experiencing the grief of losing a relationship with a man I loved, I came to understand, albeit over several years, what my father meant by this. I understood that he wanted to save me from the hurt of loving, of being the doer, not the receiver. The operator, the labourer. The less worthy. The Iove-er.'  (Publication abstract)

2017 runner up Deborah Cass Prize
And It Is What It Is i "You are given fingers before a mouth. Your ears are the last to form.", 2017 single work poetry
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 389 2017; (p. 40)
2017 shortlisted Peter Porter Poetry Prize
Last amended 15 May 2020 11:30:06
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