Chris Price plans to complete a new collection of poems, The Blind Singer, and lay the groundwork for another major project – a full-length work of creative non-fiction that will blend biography, travel, memoir, history and essay. Death’s Jest-Book will re-imagine the life of the eccentric English poet, anatomist and suicide Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) for a modern audience.
Chris Price’s first collection of poetry Husk (Auckland University Press, 2002) hit the bestseller list (unusually for a book of poems), before receiving the 2002 Best First Book of Poetry Prize at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
Her second book, Brief Lives (AUP, 2006) is a genre-crossing work that includes elements of poetry, essay, memoir and fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards in the biography category. It was also chosen as one of Best Books of 2006 by the NZ Listener, Dominion Post, National Radio and LeafSalon.
Chris Price was also one of ten writers who participated in the science-art collaboration that produced Are Angels OK? The parallel universes of New Zealand artists and scientists (Victoria University Press, 2006), edited by Paul Callaghan and Bill Manhire.
Price has worked as a book editor, and edited the national literary journal Landfall for most of the 1990s. From 1992 to 2004 she was coordinator of Writers and Readers Week for the New Zealand International Arts Festival. Since 2004 she has taught the poetry workshop at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University as well as managing its public events programmes and editing the online journal Turbine. She has an MA (Hons) in Languages and Literature from The University of Auckland, and an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University.