Six Pack Winners

Today we celebrate the publication of the third anthology of The Six Pack – a collection of 6 pieces of NZ writing chosen anonymously by a judging panel and the New Zealand public.

The Six Pack Competition was launched in 2005 with the first Six Pack published at the inaugural launch of New Zealand Book Month. Since then The Six Pack (2006) and The Six Pack Two (2007) have spent numerous weeks on the NZ Bestsellers list. The writing in The Six Pack Three is a fantastic cross-section of subjects and writing styles.

Now meet the winners…

Kate Duignan – 'Swallow'
Kate lives in Wellington where she is currently teaching the fiction class of the Masters in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University. She was the 2004 recipient of the Robert Burns Fellowship at Otago University.  She has published one novel, Breakwater (Victoria University Press, 2001), as well as short fiction and poetry in various journals.

David Geary – 'Gary Manawatu (1964–2008: Death of a Fence-Post-Modernist)'
David is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, actor, poet, teacher, batsman-wicketkeeper, his fiction has been published in Sport and the New Zealand Listener. He has also published a collection of short stores, A Man of the People (Victoria University Press, 2003) and is the 2008 Writer in Residence at Victoria University.

Aroha Harris – 'Write Poetry'
Aroha Harris belongs to Te Rarawa and Ngapuhi and is a history lecturer at the University of Auckland. She has a masters degree in philosophy and a doctorate in history. Her research interests include New Zealand history, Maori culture and society in the post-war era, oral history and race relations. She is the author of Hikoi: Forty Years of Maori Protest (Huia Publishers, 2004).

Ian Mackenzie – 'Mirror, Mirror'
Ian is a primary school teacher originally from England but who has lived in New Zealand for many years. He lives in Auckland with his wife Jane, and their two sons Jack and Tom. He has written plays for school productions and weekly mystery stories for students in an English language programme, but this is his first short story.

Marisa Maepu – '’88'
Marisa Maepu is a Samoan New Zealander, born and raised in Auckland. Now living in Wellington with her husband, Marisa has a masters in English from the University of Auckland. Her stories have been published in Niu Voices: Contemporary Pacific Fiction 1 (Huia, 2006) and was a winner in the Spasifik/Huia short story competition in 2007.

Sue Wootton – 'Virtuoso'
Sue Wootton is the 2008 Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Magnetic South (Steele Roberts 2008) and Hourglass (Steele Roberts 2005). A children’s story book, Cloudcatcher, is to be published soon.