2024 Te Tauihu Short Story Awards results
Te reo Māori category:
FIRST PRIZE: Ko te Haerenga by Atakohu Middleton
HIGHLY COMMENDED: Ko te rā tū tēnei by Hāmihi Duncan
HIGHLY COMMENDED: Te hapori karawēne by Dr Darryn Joseph
Judge Vaughan Rapatahana said: “I think that, without any doubt, our first prize winner is Ko te Haerenga. Well-written, well-paced, suspenseful, as dark as the night on which the activity takes place.”
English language category:
FIRST PLACE: My Alice by Jillian Robinson
SECOND PLACE: Rosie & the Wolf by Tania Norfolk
THIRD PLACE: The Thief by Angela Barnett
Judge Paula Morris said of these three stories:
Winner: ‘My Alice’
This story stood out for me because of its tone, which managed to avoid sentimentality even while the narrator describes a much-loved grandmother. The narrator’s dry humour makes the difference here, particularly with characterisation and with the story’s ending.
There’s fluency to the writing here and a style in evidence from the opening: this drops us straight into the story without preamble. I particularly liked the author’s handling of scene, with just the right pace in the pikelet-making section, managing to balance point of view, action and dialogue at the same time.
Second place: ‘Rosie and the Wolf’
A number of the submitted stories dealt with trauma and death, and this subject matter can ensnare a story writer. In such a compressed form, some writers will tilt into melodrama, sentimentality or abstractions. This story avoids those traps by combining the story of a childhood friend lost to illness with the (topical) trauma of dealing with a flood, and by dealing with both subjects with a light and sure touch.
Third place: ‘The Thief’
This story takes a familiar situation – a woman attending a funeral – and subverts it with an imaginative narrative about theft and coincidence. The author is adept with dialogue and also with maintaining tension in the story through subtle hints at conflict.
