Becky Manawatu (born 1982) is a New Zealand writer of
Ngāi Tahu
Ngāi Tahu, or Kāi Tahu, is the principal Māori (tribe) of the South Island. Its (tribal area) is the largest in New Zealand, and extends from the White Bluffs / Te Parinui o Whiti (southeast of Blenheim), Mount Mahanga and Kahurangi Poi ...
,
Ngāti Mamoe,
Waitaha, and
Pākehā
Pākehā (or Pakeha; ; ) is a Māori term for New Zealanders primarily of European descent. Pākehā is not a legal concept and has no definition under New Zealand law. The term can apply to fair-skinned persons, or to any non-Māori New Ze ...
background.
In 2020, she won two
Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are literary awards presented annually in New Zealand. The awards began in 1996 as the merger of two literary awards events: the New Zealand Book Awards, which ran from 1976 to 1995, and the Goodman Fielder W ...
for her first novel, ''Auē''
and Best Crime Novel at the 2020
Ngaio Marsh Awards.
Biography
Manawatu was born Becky Wixon in June 1982 in
Nelson, New Zealand
(Let him, who has earned it, bear the palm)
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, and raised in
Waimangaroa
Waimangaroa is a small town located on the West Coast of New Zealand.
The township lies on the south-west bank of the Waimangaroa River, at the western foot of the Denniston Plateau. It is to the north east of Westport and 13 km south-eas ...
on the West Coast of the South Island, 15 minutes from Westport, attending Waimangaroa Primary School.
She met her husband Tim while at
Buller High School and has two children, Siena and Maddox.
Manawatu left home at age 18 years to accompany her husband's career as a professional rugby player and coach in Italy and
Frankfurt
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...
, Germany.
The couple returned to New Zealand in 2016 to Nelson, where Manawatu began a Diploma in Writing at the
Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology
Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) is a public tertiary education institution at the top of the South Island in New Zealand. NMIT's main campus is in Nelson with other campuses in Blenheim, Marlborough, Woodbourne and Richmon ...
.
After six months the couple moved back to Waimangaroa, and Manawatu began working as a reporter at the ''
Westport News
The ''Westport News'' is an independently-owned evening newspaper published in Westport, New Zealand. It is published on weekdays, and is one of New Zealand's smallest independent newspapers. The ''Westport News'' is distributed from Karamea in ...
'', the smallest independent daily newspaper in New Zealand.
Writing
Manawatu began writing her first novel, ''Auē'', while living in Frankfurt, and first approached publisher
Mary McCallum
Mary McCallum (born 1961) is a publisher, author and journalist from New Zealand.
Background
Mary McCallum was born in 1961 in Lusaka, Zambia. Aged four, she moved to New Zealand and was educated in Wellington and the United Kingdom, includ ...
of
Mākaro Press
Mākaro Press is a New Zealand publisher based in Wellington. It was founded in 2013 and has published several award-winning books including ''Auē'' by Becky Manawatu.
History
Mākaro was founded in 2013 by novelist and editor Mary McCallu ...
in April 2016.
She continued it in Nelson under the working title ''Pluck'', submitting three chapters to McCallum in November 2016 and a manuscript in January 2017; it eventually went through five rounds of editing over a year.
Much of the novel was written in a family friend's house at the mouth of the
Mōkihinui River
The Mōkihinui River is a river located on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island, about 40 kilometres north of Westport. Meridian Energy had proposed the Mokihinui Hydro project on the river in 2007 but it was cancelled in May 2012. In ...
north of Westport. A formative experience that led to the novel was the murder of Manawatu's 10-year-old cousin Glen Bo Duggan by his abusive stepfather when Manawatu was 11.
The novel tells the story of eight-year-old orphan Arama sent to live with rural relatives at
Kaikōura
Kaikōura () is a town on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It is located on State Highway 1, 180 km north of Christchurch. The town has an estimated permanent resident population of (as of ).
The town is the government ...
and his teenage brother Tauriki.
Manawatu was longlisted for the
Commonwealth Writers Prize
Commonwealth Foundation presented a number of prizes between 1987 and 2011. The main award was called the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was composed of two prizes: the Best Book Prize (overall and regional) was awarded from 1987 to 2011; the Best ...
in 2018, and an essay of hers was selected for a ''
Landfall
Landfall is the event of a storm moving over land after being over water. More broadly, and in relation to human travel, it refers to 'the first land that is reached or seen at the end of a journey across the sea or through the air, or the fact ...
'' anthology.
''Auē'' was published by Mākaro Press in August 2019 in a run of 500 copies, and was launched at Whare Tangaroa, a clifftop house at
Cape Foulwind.
On 12 May 2020 it won the $55,000 Jann Medicott Acorn Prize for Fiction (New Zealand's richest literary prize), as well as the Hubert Church Prize for best first book of fiction, at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
It also won the Best Crime Novel and was shortlisted for the Best First Novel at the 2020
Ngaio Marsh Awards.
The judges described it as "a breath-taking expose of lives lived on the margins, and the fight for redemption and absolution".
''Auē'' was the best-selling New Zealand novel of 2020 and 2021.
Manawatu won the 2021
Robert Burns Fellowship
The Robert Burns Fellowship is a New Zealand literary residency. Established in 1958 to coincide with bicentennial celebrations of the birth of Robert Burns, it is often claimed to be New Zealand's premier literary residency. The list of past ...
to work on her next novel, titled ''Papahaua'', in Dunedin.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Manawatu, Becky
1982 births
Living people
21st-century New Zealand writers
People from Nelson, New Zealand
People from the West Coast, New Zealand
Ngāi Tahu people
Kāti Māmoe people
Waitaha (South Island iwi)
People educated at Buller High School