ALL THE RAGE
And the brilliant roughie takes it at the post. Airini Beautrais has won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for her short-story collection, Bug Week (VUP). In the process, the Whanganui writer pocketed a whacking $57,000 in prize money. She’s the first person for yonks to take out the award for a collection of stories.
By my, then there’s daylight to Peter Wells’ from 1992. It’s fair to say that Beautrais was the outside bet in a relatively safe shortlist of bigger names: Catherine Chidgey and Pip Adam, who have won the fiction prize before, and Brannavan Gnanalingam, who was shortlisted three years ago.
