A poem by Ockham Award-winning novelist Becky Manawatu. Crumbs between stones Tēnā koe XXXX I am writing to ask you some questions regarding a family harm incident which police responded to on Friday night. What time did the woman make the initial call? What time did police arrive at the scene? Was anyone arrested? If … Read more
Last night Becky Manawatu’s Auē won best first novel at the Ockham NZ Book Awards, which she knew about in advance – and the country’s biggest prize for fiction, the $55,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize, which she didn’t. So how’s today treating her? When I woke up this morning (if I can call it waking … Read more
Auē author Becky Manawatu picks holes in her mahi and then starts to sew them up again, in this essay about colonialism and tikanga and the smoke in the sky. A wise woman once tweeted to me that “explaining is losing”, yet here I am. Explaining. Because when the world is on fire, we’re losing … Read more
Becky Manawatu’s first novel is published by Mākaro Press and it’s a blinder. Dedicated to her cousin Glen Bo Duggan, who was 10 when he was killed by his mother’s boyfriend, it’s a story about kids and gangs and curdled masculinity. About serendipity, and taniwha, and resilience. It begins with Taukiri dropping his little brother … Read more
We continue our occasional – and occasionally insanely depressing – series which investigates whether literature exists in the provinces. Becky Manawatu looks for signs of bookish life in Westport. The Buller Rural Education Activities Programme Hall on Henley Street in Westport smells like a church and is decked out with those wooden school chairs that force you … Read more