The winner of the $5000 Sir James Wallace Master of Creative Writing prize for 2017, Amy McDaid, has written poetry and short stories since she was small, but not pursued writing seriously until now.

Awarded to the student who has produced what judges feel is the best body of work within the year-long Master of Creative Writing course, the prize will “buy time” for Amy to complete her first novel The Long Peace.

Tackling themes of grief, anxiety and mental illness in a stylistically interesting way, it tells the story of three intersecting lives over a nine-day period in Auckland.

Lucas, a socially awkward pharmacist, makes a deadly error. Jaanvi, a grieving mother, steals a ‘reborn’ doll called James and treats him as if he were her lost child. Stephen, a mentally ill homeless man, believes he is being pursued by his dead father’s spirit.

Amy says she found the master’s programme challenging, and the workshops at times, “even brutal”. “Yet even though our class needed to cast a critical eye over each other’s work, there was a mutual respect for each other’s distinct writing goals.”

She says the honesty and critique enabled her to grow “exponentially” as a writer over the course of a year and the course is the best thing she’s ever done.

“Our entire class learned so much and we met amazing New Zealand and international authors who had so much wisdom to share. Paula Morris’s teaching sessions on the craft of writing were invaluable, as were sessions spent with other lecturers and writers from the University, like Brian Boyd and Selina Tusitala Marsh.”

She plans to finish a second draft of The Long Peace by mid-2018 and will then hope to find a publisher.

“The $5000 will enable me to take time off from my job as a newborn intensive care nurse to write. It will also help with childcare costs for my two-year-old daughter.”

While she’s under no illusions about the difficulties of making a living as a writer, and will no doubt keep her ‘day job’, she says she’ll always write.

“Because I love to write, because I need to write, because writing is a part of who I am. From my class I now have an incredible writing community and the skills and drive to pursue my dream further.” 

Master of Creative Writing

Covened by Dr Paula Morris, the Master of Creative writing is a postgraduate programme for writers working on a large-scale creative writing project; a novel, short story collection, full-length work of creative nonfiction or poetry collection. The course includes weekly workshops and seminars. The best portfolio every year wins the Sir James Wallace Master of Creative Writing Prize of $5000, New Zealand’s richest prize for creative writing.