AUT New Zealand Creative Writing Competition

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AUT New Zealand Creative Writing Competition

The judges have made their decisions in the 2009-2010 AUT University New Zealand Creative Writing Competition.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to send in their stories and song lyrics. The quality of the work we’ve received has been outstanding. Congratulations to all our winners and place getters.

Song lyric

The winner receives a Sony Vaio laptop and the winning lyrics will be sung by a band live on bFM Breakfast. The same band will perform the song at a Fancy New Band showcase which the winner will attend. Placegetters receive some fantastic prizes from our supporters Sony NZ, Warwick and the Unity Bookshop (Auckland).

Charlotte Ryan, competition judge and host of 95bFM's Morning Glory show

Judges

Three bFM judges – 95bFM Drive host Mikey Havoc, Morning Glory host Charlotte Ryan and 95bFM creative director Paul Cowling – deliberated for some weeks over the 122 entries.

Judge's comments: The standard was very high, and as always with lyrics the great difficulty lies in their separation from a musical context. That is why we were so impressed with the response and the standard of entries and also why we feel the lyric category is such a vital and worthy component. It’s also the category which most closely reflects the nature and core focus of 95bFM as a radio station in terms of our fundamental commitment to seeking, developing, fostering and promoting the cutting edge of music both in international terms and from a home-grown perspective.

Budding songwriters are not only provided a potential platform for discovery but also for the winner an actual platform – by offering the winning submission to a Fancy New Bandshowcased artist to combine with a musical arrangement by that artist for the performance of the song at the annual Fancy New Band showcase series.

Such an opportunity is rare (usually requiring an established writing relationship) and it’s one, particularly given the generally very high standard of entries and the beguiling, original and compelling nature of the winning entry in Murray Williams’ ‘Racoon Eyes’, whose results we are greatly looking forward to hearing.

L-R: Elaine Smith, Murray Williams, Stephanie Liebert

Winner
Murray Williams: Raccoon Eyes

Second place
Elaine Smith: The Boy in the Bar

Third place
Matthew Dower: Song for a Friend

Highly commended
Holly Gooch: Vanilla
Stephanie Liebert: Ajar

Short Story

L-R Tessa Duder, Kate Duggan, Blair Granville, Stacey Nam, and Alexander Sheehan

The winners of the two categories and a selection of entries will be published in a special magazine insert in Idealog magazine's May/June issue. Each category winner will receive a new Sony Vaio laptop and five hours mentoring with leading New Zealand author, Carl Nixon.

Placegetters receive some fantastic prizes from our supporters Sony NZ, Warwick and the Unity Bookshop (Auckland).

Tessa Duder was our judge for the short story competition. Tessa has been a judge for many book and short story competitions including the Sunday Star Times Award and the Katherine Mansfield Award. Her collection of short stories, published in 2008, Is She Still Alive? – scintillating tales for women of a certain age featured on the Booksellers New Zealand’s Best Seller list for 11 weeks.

EMERGING (AGED 15 – 24 YEARS, UNPUBLISHED)

Tessa Duder with winner, Kate Duggan

Winner
Kate Duggan: Smarts and Follies

Judge's comment: What could have been a slight portrait of a passive and unfulfilled Ponsonby wife is lifted into something special by the sensitive use of language, especially notable for the accumulation of authentic, beautifully-chosen and telling detail. Here is a genuinely talented author who knows how to create character,tension and yearning with minimal dialogue, the deftest of touches – and also, when to stop.

Second place
Blair Granville: The End of Hope

Judge's comment: This powerful story effortlessly surmounts the challenges of science fiction (tone, dialogue, getting across often unfamiliar information), tricky enough in novel-length works and more so in a short story. An intelligent machine is managing the transition to useful immortality of the last human on the planet,a wealthy businessman with links to a sinister underground political movement.The psychological and environmental issues raised, and how the machine finds its plans thwarted, together make for compelling reading.

Third place
Stacey Yerin Nam: Animals

Judge's comment: The complicated dynamics of family life, a youngest child’s loneliness and his yearning for a dog, are efficiently portrayed in this story, but with the added interest of an unreliable narrator. This device lifts the story from a simple family ‘slice of life’ into something rather more interesting: a wry self-awareness, with the occasional jolt of shifting realities. Risky, but here, successful.

Highly commended
Alexander Sheehan: American Rendez-vous

OPEN (AGED 25 YEARS AND OVER, UNPUBLISHED)

Tessa Duder with winner, Rosemary Cullen

Winner
Rosemary Cullen: WYSWYG

Judge's comment: The clever, ironic title sets the tone for a powerful futuristic tale, where image in an e-world has been branded into product, and can therefore be bought, and changed at will according to fashion or mood. The logical extension of this droll, scary and not entirely improbable notion the author adroitly keeps until the final surprising moments. Along the way, an ambitious and risky space-station engineering project is successfully launched, and some very human workplace dynamics explored.

Second place
Robyn Brinkman: Ice on a Burn

Judge's comment: A ‘sister story’ set in a recognisable Kiwi bach by the beach, told with wry humour and admirable lack of sentimentality. The complicated dynamics between mosaic artist Pin, recently dumped by her boyfriend, and her younger, smarter sister Sarah are handled with authenticity and compassion.

Third place
Toni Spencer: Billy's Ghost

Judge's comment: The exuberance of two ten-year-olds exploring a beach is beautifully captured in this first-person narrative, the adult woman remembering a summer day of untroubled friendship, risk-taking and discovery. There is unusual energy in the writing, and some convincing dialogue, as well as understated sensitivity in the imagined moments of the final pages.

Highly commended
Sarah Shepherd: Still Life
Melanie Seligman: Possible Vincent
Yvonne Van Dongen: The Best Friend

The Mentor

Carl Nixon is a leading NZ playwright, short story writer and a novelist. He has won numerous awards for his fiction, including winning both the Katherine Mansfield short story competition and the Sunday Star Times competition (twice). Carl was the Ursula Bethell/Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence at Canterbury University in 2007, where he completed his first novel, Rocking Horse Road. He is a qualified teacher and has taught creative writing at the Hagley Writer's institute.