Creative Writing graduate wins award
An AUT graduate's hard work has been recognised at this year's Ockham NZ Book Awards.
Kirsten Warner's first novel The Sound of Breaking Glass scooped the Hubert Church Prize For Fiction at the awards on May 14.
The novel was initially written as Warner's thesis for the Masters of Creative Writing.
Lecturer James George was her supervisor.
"Congrats to Kirsten for all her hard work," George says.
"She realised a very complex project about the inter-generational grief of holocaust survivors."
"It was great to see this novel come to fruition, as it is a powerful text and an important subject."
The Sound of Breaking Glass is set in Auckland in the 1990s.
It was published by Mākaro Press, which gives this description of the story:
"Christel is at shattering point. She’s got two small children, her job in reality television is super high stress, she’s an activist with Women Against Surplus Plastic and now she’s being stalked. To top it off her protest milk bottle sculpture appears to have come to life like the golem of Jewish folklore and is reviving characters from a past she can hardly bear to confront.
"Christel is Second Generation – her father was a Holocaust survivor and a refugee to New Zealand after the war – and she cannot focus on the problems in front of her without dealing with an inheritance tha is both murky and unresolvable. And how to live with the secrets she begins to uncover?
"Set in Auckland in the 1990s, The Sound of Breaking Glass is that rare thing – a book that crackles with end-of-millennium urban life while vibrating with a history that’s impossible to forget."
The Sound of Breaking Glass was also reviewed by the New Zealand Listener in December.
PHOTO CREDIT: MARY PARKER