Natalie Linh Bolderston

Natalie Linh Bolderston (b. 1995, Stoke-on-Trent) published her first pamphlet, The Protection of Ghosts, in 2019. She is currently working on her debut collection, heavily informed by family history: her mother and grandmother were Vietnamese-Chinese refugees who fled to the UK.

‘I chose to write about this using my middle name because it’s part of my identity — the only part of my name that acknowledges my Vietnamese heritage’, she writes. ‘Writing about diacritics was also a political choice. In a climate where English is often treated as the superior language and many people are made to suffer for using their native languages, I wanted to resist these racist attitudes by centring and celebrating the beauty and uniqueness of Vietnamese.’

 

Forward Prizes History:

  • 2021 Forward Prizes for Best Single Poem, shortlisted for, ‘Middle Name with Diacritics’ (National Poetry Competition)
Read Middle Name with Diacritics Natalie Linh Bolderston in Conversation with the Forward Prizes