Chris Tse was born and raised in Lower Hutt. He studied English literature and film at Victoria University of Wellington, where he also completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML. Tse was one of three poets featured in AUP New Poets 4 (Auckland University Press, 2011) and his work has appeared in publications in New Zealand and overseas. His first collection, How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (AUP, 2014) won the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry in 2016.