NZSA PRESS RELEASE: 16 DEC 2024
The 2024 Graeme Lay Short Story Competition winners were announced by the NZSA Auckland Branch at their 7 December meeting.
This annual competition has once again celebrated the vitality of short story writing in New Zealand.
In his judge’s report, Graeme Lay writes:
This is the thirteenth year of the award, initiated in 2011 by Auckland Branch NZSA stalwarts Bernard Brown, Adrian Blackburn, Tom Lodge and the late Dame Christine Cole Catley. It has been my pleasure to judge the award every year since then and to recognize that it has assisted many writers to further success, not only in the short story form but also in their writing of extended fiction.
He notes the exceptionally high standard of entries, with many finalists showcasing “striking originality” in plot, characterisation, and language. The judge praised the finalists for their ability to explore complex themes, such as family dynamics and the passage of time, often with “delicate but indelible” impact.
He enjoyed the strength of theme in all the shortlisted stories:
What did the writers write about? Family stresses and differences comprised the most common themes. Physical separation, ageing parents, sibling rivalries, a first pregnancy, impinging senility, terminal illness, grief and sorrow: all these comprise points of human commonality, thus creating stories that resonated with me. As one finalist succinctly wrote, such family tensions represent, “The battle between duty and resentment”.
He remarks:
The truest test of a story’s quality is its ability to remain in the reader’s consciousness for some time after it has been set aside… that allowed the final, winning story to emerge, but not before considerable contemplation had taken place.
The winning writers and stories are as follows:
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Emma Harris has won the 2024 Graeme Lay Short Story Award for her poignant story, “The Present”. Inspired by her personal experience of pregnancy and her mother’s sudden death from cancer, Harris’s story explores the complexities of family relationships and the enduring power of hope. Lay writes:
A family story of terminal illness and death, juxtaposed with imminent new life. It had me hooked from its opening sentence, which describes “… the heavy rhythmic chop of axe on gum as her father cuts his grief into stackable chunks.”
The family attempts to cope with illness and loss while at the same time the narrator prepares for her first baby’s arrival. “Receiving the news she was to be a grandparent, her mother’s face covered all four seasons, then settled into a frozen winter.”
With Christmas approaching, everywhere in the family home are reminders of the narrator’s girlhood, while her inarticulate father is sympathetically portrayed in his attempts to cope with his loss. The poignant ending is superbly executed and very affecting.
A beautifully written and deeply moving family story.
Emma lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. Her first published short story appeared in the Katikati Advertiser in 1984 – a dystopian tale featuring mutating kiwifruit vines. She has a BA in sociology and MHSc and works full time as a psychotherapist. In recent years she has found time to return to her love of writing short stories and poetry. She had a short story published in Reading Room in 2021 and was shortlisted in the 2022 Te Tauihu Short Story Awards.
As first place winner, Emma receives $500 prize money.
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Karen Phillips has been awarded the runner-up prize for her evocative story, “Loess and Loss”. This haunting tale explores the impact of climate change on the natural world and the delicate balance of human relationships. Loess and Loss was inspired by the side effects of climate change on the glaciers of Aoraki / Mt Cook and the side effects of life on us all.
Karen began writing in 2009 and won the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Novice Award and Heartland
competitions that year. Her stories have been published in Takahe, Flash Frontier, Breach of
All Size and the Fresh Ink anthologies. Steele Roberts published A Question of Blood, her
first short story collection in 2017 and The Cuba Press published Glass Houses, a second
collection in 2020.
As second place winner, Karen receives $250 prize money.
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Kay Meyer’s story, “A Marvellous Day”, was highly commended for its witty and insightful portrayal of the literary world. An anecdote gifted by a friend inspired A Marvellous Day.
Kay writes by the shores of Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Both her parents were lively
raconteurs, but she owes her love of fiction to the many stories her father made up for her as a
child. Kay’s short fiction has been published in anthologies and on Flash Frontier. She is
currently working on a collection of short stories and a novel set in the present-day
Wairarapa.
As third place winner, Kay receives $100 prize money.
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We also congratulate Joshua McKenzie-Brown and Joseph Janiszewski for their highly commended stories, and Dione Jones, Greg Judkins, Lorraine Brockbank, and Cath Bennett for their commended stories.
Special thanks to shortlisting judges Maria Gill and Kit Willett who volunteered their time to help this branch competition to run in 2024.
The Graeme Lay Short Story Award continues to recognise and celebrate the talent of New Zealand’s emerging and established writers. Thank you to all who submitted, for your time and your stories.
