Epic myth takes wing

Wellington novelist and playwright Whiti Hereaka has won the $60,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at this year’s Ockham NZ Book Awards for Kuran gaituku, a contemporary retelling of the traditional Te Arawa story Hatupatu and the Bird-Woman.

Rob Kidd, convenor of judges for the fiction is extraordinary, innovative and unashamedly literary. “It’s an epic poem of a novel, resonant of Māori oral traditions, that gives a voice, form and a name to the birdwoman from the Māori myth. is poetic, intense, clever and sexy as hell.”