The award was announced this evening at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Internationally renowned Ngāruawāhia resident Catherine Chidgey has won New Zealand’s richest writing award, the $50,000 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, for her novel The Wish Child. This year’s four category award winners will appear at a free event at the Auckland Writers Festival: Th e State We’re In on F riday 19 May at 5.30pm in the Heartland Festival Room, Aotea Square. Hats off to that too!Īnd hats off to the winners! Enjoy this moment of well-deserved recognition by your peers. Away from the glitz and flare of an awards ceremony, there is an active terrain of writing and writers. Three cheers VUP! Hats off to all NZ publishers, large and small, who back local writers and books. VUP is a strong supporter of local writing, publishing more poetry that anyone else without compromising on quality. She is New Zealand’s current Poet Laureate.Ĭongratulations to the winners, commiserations to those who missed out and hats off to Victoria University Press for an extraordinary showing. As Commonwealth Poet (2016) she composed and performed a poem for the Queen at Westminster Abbey. Her first collection, Fast Talkin’ PI, won the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry in 2010. She was the First Pacific Islander to graduate with a PhD in English at the University of Auckland where she currently is an Associate Professor. Selina Tusitala Marsh is of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English and French descent. Black Ice Matter won the 2017 Hubert Church Prize for Best First Book Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. In 2016, Huia Publishers published Gina’s debut book of short stories Black Ice Matter. She is a Barrister specialising in Family Law and has a Master of Creative Writing from Auckland University. Gina Cole is of Fijian, Scottish and Welsh descent.
I love that daring in the poem, and that Selina is the new daring, badass, bold Poet Laureate for Aotearoa. I found that it translates as – the daring, the badass, the bold. I love the last stanza and the description of the women as “los atrevido”.
I love how the title reads as a play on each word in all their different meanings, especially “class”. In most writing classes that I have attended, I have been one of a minority of Māori and Pasifika writers in the class. I am also a kailoma Fijian woman, and I have been in a creative writing class with Selina. Note from Gina: I love this poem because I have attended many creative writing classes. ©Selina Tusitala Marsh from Tightrope (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2017)
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