New Zealand Herald, Andrew Laxon, Saturday Aug 13, 2011.
Short story winner Gemma Bowker-Wright in Wellington. Photo / Mark MitchellIt plays on her mind whether she's reporting to John Key on climate change or developing an award-winning short story in what could become her new career.
The 27-year-old science analyst, who works in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, was yesterday awarded this year's $10,000 BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award for short story writing.
Her winning entry Katherine - praised by writer and head judge Owen Marshall as "confident and original, with balance, compassion and restraint" - describes an elderly woman's mental decline through the eyes of her bewildered husband, David.
As the story moves back and forward through his memory, it throws up a geological image of mountains rising "sharp and white, the result of millions of years of tectonic uplift".
Bowker-Wright agrees that is one of the preoccupations with her writing.
A previous award-winning story combined the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland with evolutionary theory.
Full story at New Zealand Herald.
2 comments:
how disappointing the Herald never mentioned the winning Secondary Student, Chiao Lin who has been in my creative writing group and who I (along with her fab English teacher) guided her with her winning story.
Chiao, like her award winning older sister (who is a poet), Yin, has an exceptional talent as a writer.
Still, this is a first for me to have one of my students win the KM and I am delighted for her. Well deserved.
Yet again, the YA section of the literary world gets ignored by the mass media.
Yes, Tania. I'm finding it's so as I shuffle through the internet looking for more than a passing mention of Chiao Lin.
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