Emma Hughes has been announced as the 2024 Landfall Young Writers’ Essay Competition winner for her moving essay, ‘Fourteen Robyns’.

‘Fourteen Robyns’ is a narrative essay about visiting a Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa clinic (formerly known as Family Planning) and witnessing the different lives that intersect in the emotionally charged space of the waiting room. Emma says the essay, which started as an accumulation of journal entries detailing her visits over the years, ‘was inspired by all the incredible work the organisation does throughout New Zealand.’

‘When I arrive, I’m always a bit scared, and I think that’s common. But when I leave, I’m only ever amazed by the goodness of the people who work there. The smiles across the room, the chats with reception, those vulnerable moments with just the clinician. So much goes on there, and I can always feel the rich history of care on every visit.’

‘There’s hurt in those rooms, but I’ve always looked for the ways they inevitably lighten … I feel a wealth of kindness and patience in these clinics, typically embodied by a handful of moments observed between strangers.’

Emma’s essay centres around Robyn, the clinic receptionist, who serves as the unifying figure in the waiting room, connecting everyone together.

‘At the core of the essay is the way warmth can turn a room. Like Robyn, we all have the opportunity and the agency to have grace for one another, to make each other laugh and to make things better.’

In her report, Landfall editor and judge Lynley Edmeades noted that Emma’s essay ‘puts a spotlight on austerity and bureaucracy’.

‘There is something of the anthropologist’s eye here, a gaze that allows the writer the knowledge that there is a reality bigger than her own.’

‘There are layers of quiet comment: failing public services; the intergenerational transmission of heteronormativity; the inability of some individuals to uphold the status quo or process their own intergenerational trauma … but the real clincher for me is the subtle comment on the tension that lies between third- and fourth-wave feminist movements.’

‘The essay’s protagonist, in a state of desperation and confusion, wonders what is so lucky about having to come to a place like this, with its disenfranchised clientele and post-austerity beige. The latter has all the trappings of what those earlier feminists fought so hard for—sexual liberation, free contraception, anonymity of sex education and services—and yet.’

‘Hughes’ essay is spare, touching, and shows a writer with immense potential.’

Emma won $500 for her winning essay, which she has generously donated to Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa. She encourages others to donate: http://sexualwellbeing.org.nz/about/get-involved/donation/

Second place was awarded to Sherry Zhang for ‘Revenge Fantasy.’ Highly commended are ‘Frankenstein Diaries’ by Cadence Chung and ‘Good Music’ by Grace Bridle.

Emma’s winning essay ‘Fourteen Robyns’ is featured in Landfall 247: Autumn 2024 edited by Lynley Edmeades, available now.