Interviews with Leeanne O’Brien and Shima Jack, with new writing
The Sargeson Prize is New Zealand’s richest short story prize, sponsored by the University of Waikato. Named for celebrated New Zealand writer Frank Sargeson, it was first offered in 2019.
Leeanne O’Brien, winner, Open Division
Leeanne’s story ‘Crawl Space’ is approximately 4570 words and is published on Newsroom, here.
What are the inspirations behind your story? How did you come to write this particular story?
The starting point for the story was a newspaper article that I came across years ago, cut out, and kept.
Does your story deal with themes you turn over in other ways, too, or does it differ from your other / earlier work?
I don’t think that I have produced enough work yet to know whether I have themes, so I can’t really answer this question. But a good friend who didn’t know I wrote in my spare time (I tend not to tell people) sent me a message after I sent him a link to the Waikato University press release, without revealing anything more. He asked if my writing tended ‘to linger in dark places’. I thought the answer to this was probably yes (although my response to him was a little more hmmm, maybe, not always). So, to the extent that ‘dark places’ is a theme, it is one paddock I till. I would like to be able to naturally write with more levity. I greatly admire those who deal with difficult subjects with humour. (I am reluctant to name names because I think it does a disservice to others who are equally talented in this way.)
You each write in different forms – poetry, flash fiction, nonfiction. What makes the longer short story its own particular challenge?
My characters’ stories seem to have their own natural length. For a long while ‘Crawl Space’ finished at an earlier point in time. But the narrator had other ideas. Maybe this illustrates something about longer short stories – that the characters want it both ways – to occupy a space where they have room for more than an elevator pitch of their lives and yet not so much space that they later regret revealing too much.
What else are you writing, besides award-winning short stories? And would you like to share something more with our readers?
I have a number of started, half-finished, half-started pieces in all possible forms (except a novel; I haven’t met a character or place or circumstance yet that demands a novel). My mind is a flea. What I want to finish first is an essay for a friend to circulate to her contacts. I am hoping that it might start a discussion. If that all sounds a bit cryptic, it’s because I am not sure I can pull it off, be persuasive enough. I need to be more disciplined.
In late August I went to some of the events at the Auckland Writers Festival. I also attended some of the workshops, including one via Zoom with one of my favourite authors, Lydia Davis. Participants were asked to prepare a very short piece for her to critique. She is an incredible writer and translator and has a brain the size of the planet. I wanted to bring my shiniest apple to the teacher. I laboured away and ended up with about ten. This was my contribution on the day:
Rehabilitation
I have fourteen exercises. Number eight I know as bird dog but my new physiotherapist calls it the Superman pose. I kneel on the floor on my hands and knees, my shoulders directly above my hands. I lift my right arm and my left leg and stretch them forwards and backwards in a single plane. I count to three and then return my hand and knee to the floor and repeat the movement, this time lifting my left arm and my right leg off the ground. Each time I lift, I must tighten my trans-abdominal muscles, my tabs. There is such a lot to think about without alerting the pheasant, especially now that I must also freeze time and pluck from the sky the bomb speeding towards the power plant.
Leeanne O’Brien is a lawyer who has worked as a legislative drafter for the last 20 years. She has been shortlisted twice in the annual New Zealand National Flash Fiction Day competition and was runner-up in the 2016 takahē Short Story competition.
Shima Jack. winner, Secondary Schools Division
Shima’s story ‘Fourth Wall’ is approximately 2073 words and will be published on Newsroom.
What are the inspirations behind your story? How did you come to write this particular story?
The inspiration behind ‘Fourth Wall’ comes from a personal fascination with the intricacies of male and female relationships and how they are affected by societal roles, even at the young age of the characters within the story. One central theme within the story is the theatricality of ‘masculinity’.
Does your story deal with themes you turn over in other ways, too, or does it differ from your other / earlier work?
These themes are something which have interested me recently, and I have actually done my NCEA Level 3 Painting portfolio this year on how femininity and women are repressed and twisted into different shapes by patriarchal society. Tigers, Victorian rooms, the human body and putrefying flesh are used as symbols.
You write in different forms – poetry, flash fiction, nonfiction. What makes the longer short story its own particular challenge?
‘Fourth Wall’ differs from my earlier short stories because I wanted to experiment with a longer, unchained form of the short story which was ‘messier’ and left loose ends trailing, like they do in real life. I also tested out creating a shift in the narrative voice of the protagonist to create character development from the start to the end.
What else are you writing, besides award-winning short stories? And would you like to share something more with our readers?
I think the longer short story (as opposed to flash fiction) poses challenges in terms of how very specific world and character building has to be done very quickly and then maintained at a dense level throughout the whole story. Pacing is another challenge, at least for me personally. Pacing in poetry comes more naturally to me, while with short stories I struggle with pacing until it comes time to write the climax, and then words flow.
Currently I’m undertaking an NZSA Youth Mentor Programme with Majella Cullinane, and working on both short stories and poetry. Short stories will never cease to be important to me, but I would also like to develop my poetry more.
Milk
angel cheek and sweet tooth, honey rasp down the tongue –
grown long of limb on mother’s mammoth milk
you’re origami unfolding, bounding down summer’s slopes
not wary of the promise in snappable bone
you’re river stone, sapling, rockfall with mussed hair,
you learned to shred flesh with a canine nip
Daddy speaks from the larynx and from the lung, we allow it
to hear you – tumbling tones, all elastic and taut
you’re apex in this chain, i’ll match you line for line
i’ll play in the dirt and swallow worms in the wings until
innards slide out like glaciers, wet with shame and pale
i mind every cue, to memory commit
i have feminine, reptilian, civilian when you ask
i can cut a centreline down breastbone and
feed you spoonfuls of marrow blood all rich and slick
you smear it across my skin in a pattern, an obscenity, a sign
i’ll be splayed wide, molten wax, i’ll watch you on my back
when you’re high with your brothers in the wide black
of alpine night. i allow it to hear you: offkey, careless
there never was another option
Shima Jack is a year 13 student at Logan Park High School in Dunedin. She is the founder and one of the coordinators of the Dunedin Youth Writers Association, and a co-editor of the group’s monthly writing anthology, ‘Minor Gospel’. Her writing draws inspiration from music, art, film, theatre, science and personal experience. Shima placed 3rd equal in the 2021 NZ Yearbook Poetry Competition, first in the 2021 Sargeson Short Story Prize Secondary Schools Division, second in the 2022 Charles Brasch Essay Competition, and has been included in 2019, 2020 and 2021 Re-Draft editions. She was also selected to participate in the 2022 NZSA Youth Mentorship Programme.