Winners announced for Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing

Isobel Gabites of Otaki has won the Fiction category for Heaven in the Mind, a coming-of-age story. The narrator, a teenage girl finds slices of heaven, sanctuaries, in amongst the hell of a strict Catholic girl’s school.

The winner of the Non-Fiction category is Alice Miller from Wellington for her essay Dark energy beyond the reception rooms structured around a story of an old classmate and exploring topics as diverse as psychological experiments, the literature of Leo Tolstoy and cognitive neuroscience.

Judge Dave Armstrong announced the winners last night at the 2010 Research Honours event and winner Isobel Gabites was present to accept her prize. Dave described the writing of her story as sparse and elegant. “Believable dialogue contrasts with prose rich in religious symbolism yet the author shows an acute understanding of the real, scientific world.”

Alice Miller was not able to accept her award as she in the USA on a scholarship. “The winner of the non-fiction category contrasted reason and emotion; science and art. I was fascinated by the author’s suggestion that we often use reason simply to prove our emotional non-rational beliefs, ignoring evidence to the contrary,” said Dave.

Both winners will receive $2,500 and their entry will be published in the New Zealand Listener in January. The theme of this year’s competition was ‘The Mind’, with entrants taking their inspiration from the John Milton quote “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n”.

The Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing is organised by the Royal Society of New Zealand in association with the New Zealand Listener magazine and the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, headed by Professor Bill Manhire.

About the winners

Alice Miller is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist. Since 2008, she has received the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award, the CNZ Louis Johnson Bursary, and the prize for the Landfall Essay Competition. Alice has an MA from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Glenn Schaeffer Fellow.

Isobel Gabites began her science degree in 1976 and was also invited to join Bill Manhire’s Creative Writing course as one of the first intakes. Her combined studies have led her to write a number of naturalist publications- the most recent being The Native Garden- Design Themes from Wild NZ.

All the shortlisted entries can be read at http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/