Friday, September 07, 2007



BOOKMAN BEATTIE BLOGGING FROM BYRON BAY

Yesterday we flew with Air New Zealand to Brisbane, collected a small rental car from Avis and drove two hours south to the northern New South Wales town of Byron Bay where we are attending a friend’s wedding on Saturday.

Sadly our accommodation, Watermark at Watego’s Bay, which is superb in every other way, does not have WiFi, (I have commented on this to the property manager!), so later I will go into town and find an internet café in order to get my blog “on air”.

We were striding past the small airside Whitcoulls store on our way to the departure lounge yesterday when I noticed a display of THE SIX PACK- TWO just published as the centre piece for New Zealand Book Month. Of course I couldn’t not buy a copy so in I went. One advantage of buying it there was that there is no gst component so instead of paying $6 in town (a bargain anyway) I paid $5.30.

Once on board the plane, instead of reading the book I had taken with me, I immediately began to read THE SIX PACK. Between eating breakfast, talking to Annie and reading Kia Ora, the Air NZ magazine, I read five of the six stories in THE SIX PACK.
What a terrific selection, well done the judges. All of them entertaining; I was so engrossed that the next thing I knew we were landing at Brisbane.

The book starts with an introduction by Miriama Kamo in which she gives us some insights into the judging process – an impressive lineup of judges by the way. In addition to Mereama were Dame Fiona Kidman, Finlay McDonald, Joan Mackenzie and Elizabeth Caffin.

In Faith Oxenbridge’s opening story, In the Back of a VW, she takes us inside the life of teenager Rima who “is the only girl in the seventh form – apart from the Christians and brainy girls – who hasn’t had sex”.
Then Elizabeth Smither introduces us to Internet dating in Kathy & Tim, while Charlotte Grimshaw gives us a glimpse of the dark side in The Yard Broom.
Dave Armstrong provides some belly laughs with his Foodbanquet before Jennifer Lane illustrates the joys and perils of pregnancy in Scout’s Honour.
I’ve yet to read Tracey Slaughter’s Note Left on a Window, but I have no doubt that it will be right up to the very high standard of short fiction of the others.

Congratulations to the authors, and to the publishers, New Zealand Book Month with Whitiera Pubishing. A superb piece of publishing that will surely lead to an even wider appreciation of the high quality of writing and publishing of fiction in New Zealand. I salute you all.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There were hundreds of entries in this I believe. I know there's a careful selection for the best 6 but did anyone notice that the majority of winners are pretty much established - one has almost completed a MFA in Creative Writing, writes theatre reviews for the Listener, another has won the Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate, completed four collections of short-stories and four novels for goodness sake, and another is the author of three novels, a collection of short stories, double finalist in the Sunday Star times short-story competition, won the Katherine Mansfield twice, and Oh the competition! Need I go on. This seems a little biased. How is someone without anything to their name able to compete! Shouldn't there be some sort of criteria for entering. I don't know. Maybe a category for those already published and another for those unpublished. What is your opinion Mr Beattie? Anybody?

Beattie's Book Blog said...

These entries are anonymous of course so the judges have no idea who the writers are. And not surprisingly the best writers win, that surely is the object of such a competition. I guess the organisers could consider running a separate competition for previously unpublished writers.
But as it stands I think the result was a good one.