WRITERS’ AWARD TO NURSE

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31865, 18 December 1968, Page 2

WRITERS’ AWARD TO NURSE

A 19-year-old Auckland nurse, Miss Judith Robinson, is the first winner of a New Zealand biennial short story competition, the Young Writers’ Award, sponsored by the South Island Writers’ Association.

Two stories in her school magazine are the only works Miss Robinson has had published and this is her first literary prize. Her winning entry, “The Anniversary,” was written for her own pleasure just before her eighteenth birthday. A well known New Zealand writer. Mrs Joy Cowley, judged the 38 entries. She is an author of short stories and a novel, “Nest in a Falling Tree." Mrs Cowley describes “The Anniversary” as “slight in that it offers no earth-shaking plot and poses no new questions. A woman holds a monologue with her lover on the anniversary of his death. But

it is in this very slightness that the stoiy succeeds. “The writer handles an unpretentious and welldefined plot- with confidence, resists over-statement, melodrama, so that the full sympathies of the reader are roused. “The result is a warm and entirely convincing story which subtly blends light and shade, humour and pathos, and is reminiscent of Jean Cocteau’s ‘The Human Voice.’ “Perhaps it is this association which makes me feel ‘The Anniversary’ would be well suited to broadcasting. But whether it finds a market or not it will remain what it is, a fine piece of work and for me the ultimate pleasure in

Sticky Problem.—lf your dressing-table drawer gets stuck, try rubbing the edges with a bar of soap—it is often al) that is needed.

a new and rewarding experience.” The top six stories were selected from 11 entries. A Christchurch writer, Richard Brooke, of 82 Sherborne Street, came second with his entry, “The White Flower.” “Into the Circle” by Robert Simpson, R.D. 1, Richmond, Nelson, was third; “The House,” by Gail M. Follett, 109 Massey Street, Frankton, Hamilton, fourth; “Sentiment,” by Alistair Thompson, 96 Hamilton Street, Gore, fifth: and “A Day in the Life of the Stream of Consciousness,” by Stephen Chan, 18 Currie Avenue, Mount Roskill, Auckland, sixth.