book cover design contest #5: parade, patricia grace
“Yesterday I went with Hoani, Lena, and the little ones up along the creek where the bush begins, to cut fern and flax.”
So begins “PARADE“, by Māori author Patricia Grace (1937 – ) from her short story collection Waiariki published in 1975, the first such collection by a Māori woman writer.
A brief summary from the New Zealand Book Council website:
“Patricia Grace is a major New Zealand novelist, short story writer and children’s writer, of Ngati Toa, Ngati Raukawa and Te Ati Awa descent, and is affiliated with Ngati Porou by marriage. Grace began writing early, while teaching and raising her family of seven children, and has since won many national and international awards, including the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize for fiction, the Deutz Medal for Fiction, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, widely considered the most prestigious literary prize after the Nobel. A deeply subtle, moving and subversive writer, in 2007 Grace received a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to literature.”
The prize for the winning entry is $1500NZ!
Jurors include the author herself, illustrious book cover designer John Gall, Venus febriculosa colleague Marco Sonzogni, and the former publishing director of Penguin NZ, Geoff Walker.
As usual, complete information and rules are here.
You may read the full text of the story is here.
