Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories
Editor:
Paula Morris
Consulting editor:
Darryn Joseph
Publisher:
Auckland University Press
ISBN:
9781869409951
Date Published:
10 August
Pages:
284
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$45.00
An essential new anthology of our best Māori short fiction.
Kia hiwa rā ki tēnei tuku,
kia hiwa rā ki tēnā tuku!
E, ko te paenga pakipoto
ka rewa i te pae pukapuka
nekeneke mai, nukunuku mai
ki tēnei huihuinga kaituhi Māori,
ki tēnei pukenga whakaaro tuatini, hī!
— From the Kupu Whakamihi by Darryn Joseph
Hiwa is a vibrant, essential collection of contemporary Māori short stories, featuring twenty-seven writers working in English or te reo Māori. The writers range from famous names and award winners – Patricia Grace, Witi Ihimaera, Whiti Hereaka, Becky Manawatu, Zeb Nicklin – to emerging voices like Shelley Burne-Field, Jack Remiel Cottrell, Anthony Lapwood and Colleen Maria Lenihan.
A showcase of contemporary talent, Hiwa includes biographical introductions for each writer’s work, and explores the range of styles and subjects in the flourishing world of Māori fiction.
Named for Hiwa-i-te-rangi, the ninth star of Matariki, signifying vigorous growth and dreams of the year ahead, this anthology reveals the flourishing world of Māori writing today, in Aotearoa and beyond.
From the introduction:
Hiwa represents a gathering of Māori writers, of different styles and points of view, born and based in different places, with wildly varying relationships to – and knowledge of – their whakapapa. The churning spirals of writers’ lives in the twenty-first century mean that some of the stories also form part of contemporary Australian writing, and American writing. Scholars will find other sets and subsets – Indigenous, Postcolonial, Oceanic, Pacific – and identify genres like realism, crime, mystery, fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, and so on. No writer, and no story, is just one thing . . . .
[The book] marks the vigorous growth of story-writing by Māori writers in the 21st century, each of us building on centuries of precedent, both spoken and written. It also sends a wish soaring high into the night: for more writers to give the short story serious consideration, and for more readers to explore its artful pleasures and possibilities. More stories, more readers, more stars falling from the sky and taking shape in a world that is constantly re-written and re-imagined.
About the editors:
Paula Morris MNZM (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Manuhiri, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning novelist, story writer and essayist from Auckland. Her most recent books are False River (Penguin, 2017), a collection of her essays and stories; and Shining Land (Massey University Press, 2020), a collaboration with photographer Haru Sameshima about the writer Robin Hyde. Her novel Rangatira (Penguin, 2011) won the fiction category of the New Zealand Post Book Awards in 2012, and the fiction prize of the Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards the same year. She is the editor of the Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories (2009) and a co-editor (with Michelle Elvy and James Norcliffe) of Ko Aotearoa Tātou / We Are New Zealand (Otago University Press, 2020).
Paula is an associate professor at the University of Auckland, where she is the director of the Master of Creative Writing. She has mentored writers through the NZSA and the Te Papa Tupu Māori Writers Incubator, and also teaches writing at festivals, schools, universities and community programmes in New Zealand and overseas. Paula has been awarded numerous international residencies, and in 2019 was the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow. A former judge for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the Pikihuia Awards and the ARA Historical Novel Prize, she has appeared at literary events in Australia, Canada, China, Europe, India, Japan, South Africa, the UK and the US, and at events on indigenous writing and publishing in Banff, London and Taipei.
Darryn Joseph (Ngāti Maniapoto) is an associate professor at Massey University, and his quiet, unassuming, yet prolific contribution to reo Māori creativity in Aotearoa is impressive. He has published more than 20 books and written numerous resources for immersion education, including textbooks, chapter books and journal articles. He is a creative writer himself, past winner of the Huia (now Pikihuia) Short Story Awards for a work in te reo and the LIANZA Te Kura Pounamu Award for a book for younger readers in te reo.
Darryn was a trustee on Storylines and is currently a board member of Read NZ Te Pou Muramura, and has served as a judge for the Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards, the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults and the Storylines Te Kahurangi Kāterina Te Heikōkō Mataira Award.
