Short stories leave authors nowhere to hide. But Ockham winner Beautrais nails it every time
There was a cool NZ$57,000 up for grabs for the winner of the 2021 Jann Medlicott Acorn prize for fiction. That’s a lot of dosh for any writer, so judging this prize felt like an immense responsibility.
In judging this category of the Ockham New Zealand book awards, I was joined by Dunedin writer and former programme director of the Dunedin Writers & Readers festival, Claire Finlayson, and Hokianga-based writer and books editor, Paul Little. At the shortlisting stage we were joined by Tommy Orange, whose debut novel, the searing There There, was a finalist for a Pulitzer prize in 2019.
And at the awards ceremony in Auckland on Wednesday night, we announced to the world we had awarded the prize to Bug Week, a knockout collection of short stories by Whanganui-based writer Airini Beautrais published by Wellington’s Victoria University Press (who published three of the shortlisted titles, the fourth being published by the excellent Wellington outfit Lawrence & Gibson). It was the first time a short-story collection has taken out the top fiction prize since 2008.
The thing about short stories is that there is nowhere to hide. A short story has to work hard, saying a lot by saying very little. Whether she is writing about or from the perspective of a little girl, a spurned lover, an ageing madam, or, astonishingly, a toroa (albatross), Beautrais nails an authentic voice each time. With a spiky confidence and knowing, mordant humour, Beautrais writes with a crushing and witty eye on humanity at its most troubled and askew.
We all agreed it’s a tightly wound and remarkably assured collection that sustains a vice-like grip from start to finish. These atmospheric short stories evoke a strong sense of quiet unease, a dark underbelly, slow burning rage as well as the absurdly comic. Scrutinising the female experience from a dazzling multitude of angles and voices, each story crackles with raw power and a bracing energy. Bug Week is a beautifully observed and fierce punch in the guts.
From mid-September to the end of October, boxes of books were delivered by courier to us at our homes and workplaces. Slashing open each box brought a new thrill. It was a fullon immersion into New Zealand fiction – in a short space of time we were required to read the whopping 50 New Zealand novels that were submitted to the fiction category. And despite the care, attention to detail and time it took to read these books not once did it feel like a chore.
In fact, it was an honour to read what was such a wide range of New Zealand fiction, so closely and deeply. I was forced to read books that I would otherwise have bypassed, and in some cases, I was pleasantly surprised by what I read. We worked collaboratively – there was a lot of communal thinking and a lot of talking. I went into this assuming we would all have wildly opposing opinions, so when we met up in Auckland for our longlist selection
meeting, I went armed with pages and pages of notes, ready to defend my top 10.
As it happened, we were all unanimous with our longlist and we selected our 10 books in record time. I knew that things would get harder as we had to whittle this down to a shortlist of four books and then on to agreeing on one winning title. And at some stage, all three of us had to let go of one darling when it came to the shortlisting process. Eight out of 10 of the longlisted books were published in, or at least penned by, a writer based in Wellington.
And thrillingly, half of the books are debut novels. At a glance, there is something for practically any reader on the longlist; comic fiction, commercial fiction, fiction with psychological thriller leanings, experimental fiction, books dealing with hard-hitting social realism, and of course, even a collection of short stories. The longlist makes a terrific reading list; dive in, I recommend them all.
It’s a heavyweight shortlist. Catherine Chidgey’s Remote Sympathy takes us to Buchenwald labour camp during the second world war. A look at “wilful blindness,” it’s immersive, profound and beautifully plotted. Pip Adam’s wonderfully mind-melting and startlingly original Nothing to See is an exhilarating look at surveillance, identity, gender and people living on the margins. She’s a vibrant voice. And Brannavan Gnanalingam’s incendiary Sprigs is an important examination of racism, violence and toxic masculinity that everyone should read.
It was a long process to reach our final decision and it wasn’t always completely unanimous like I’ve heard it has been in previous years. And, in a radical turn of events, at one point when we thought we had our winner, we actually changed our minds. We would often diplomatically say to each other, “you know, any four of these books could win”. Which is true and is what initially made the decision monstrously hard to make.
Notably, two of the shortlisted authors (Chidgey and Adam) are previous winners of the fiction prize, which perhaps suggests that the generous cash prize allows a writer some freedom to knuckle down and spend time refining their future projects. We re-read and scrutinised each book. The fresh eyes and perspective of Tommy Orange was crucial. He pulled no punches and we were gripped by his exacting analysis of each book.
Like us, Orange was smitten with
Bug Week and of it said: “I was consistently surprised by sentences, the beauty and singular language. If the book were a bug it would be a big one, with teeth and venom, with wings and a surprising heart, possibly several, beating on every page with life.” We hope that Bug Week, with the added profile of this prize, will find new readers to luxuriate in its eerie, dark and witty pleasures.