Comments from Judge Owen Marshall
I commend the Sunday Star-Times, Penguin Random House NZ and the Milford Foundation for their support of this competition, which was established in 1984 and remains an important encouragement for New Zealand authors. Short fiction has an honourable tradition in New Zealand writing and continues to flourish here. The competition draws a great many entries and my thanks go to the preliminary judges of the open category who reduced the original number of entries to a manageable short list. The standard of this list is always high and the variety of modes and intentions makes comparison a challenge. There is always a subjective element to judging and a different judge may well have made different choices. All of the short list pieces have considerable merit, and the five I selected for final assessment are especially successful fictions. I congratulate the authors of them all.
Home makes demands on readers as it follows two lovers, El and the narrator, through Auckland’s streets and across its foreshore. Gender neutral pronouns, no speech marks, lists, unconventional syntax and punctuation, but the language mode suits the characters and intentions involved, and an attentive reader is richly rewarded, especially on a re-reading. The lovers are two of life’s casualties, homeless losers, and criminals no doubt in the view of many, but transfigured here in a portrayal that is wistful, poignant, and with a glow from love and hope. There is a skilful indirectness to the revelation of character, and an emotional intensity that make this a remarkable story and a worthy winner.