Shonagh Maureen Koea (born 1939) is a New Zealand fiction writer.

Biography

Koea was born in

Taranaki Taranaki is a region in the west of New Zealand's North Island. It is named after its main geographical feature, the stratovolcano of Mount Taranaki, also known as Mount Egmont. The main centre is the city of New Plymouth. The New Plymouth Dist ...

, New Zealand, in 1939, and grew up in

Hastings Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...

, Hawke's Bay. She became a journalist and began working at the ''

Taranaki Herald The ''Taranaki Herald'' was an afternoon daily newspaper, published in New Plymouth, New Zealand. It began publishing as a four-page tabloid on 4 August 1852. Until it ceased publication in 1989, it was the oldest daily newspaper in the country. ...

'' newspaper in

New Plymouth New Plymouth ( mi, Ngāmotu) is the major city of the Taranaki region on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. It is named after the English city of Plymouth, Devon from where the first English settlers to New Plymouth migrated. ...

. There she met and married a fellow journalist, George Koea of Te Āti Awa. She wrote novels as a pastime; however none were published. In her late 20s Koea stopped writing fiction, disillusioned with her lack of success. However, ten years later, in 1981, she submitted a story to New Zealand's leading literary contest of the time (the Air New Zealand Short Story Competition) and won. Her stories began to be published in magazines such as ''The Listener''. Koea's husband died in 1987, and in 1990 she moved to

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

. Since then, she has been a full-time writer; she has received a number of literary grants and fellowships, and produced novels, short stories and memoirs.

Works

Recurring themes in Koea's writing are personal relationships and their difficulties, and men's and women's roles in the family. Male characters are often oppressive, and females initially helpless; after a period, however, the women eventually take charge of their own destiny. Her narratives have been likened to those of fellow New Zealand writers Katherine Mansfield and

Frank Sargeson Frank Sargeson () (born Norris Frank Davey; 23 March 1903 – 1 March 1982) was a New Zealand short story writer and novelist. Born in Hamilton, Sargeson had a middle-class and puritanical upbringing, and initially worked as a lawyer. After ...

, which also centred on familiar characters and situations. Koea's main publisher is

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

Collections of short stories

* 1987 - ''The Woman Who Never Went Home and Other Stories'' * 1993 - ''Fifteen Rubies by Candlelight'' * 2013 - ''The Best of Shonagh Koea's Short Stories''

Novels

* 1989 - ''The Grandiflora Tree'' * 1992 - ''Staying Home and Being Rotten'' * 1994 (and reissued in 2007) - ''Sing To Me, Dreamer'' * 1996 - ''The Wedding at Bueno-Vista'' * 1998 - ''The Lonely Margins of the Sea'' * 2001 - ''Time for Killing'' * 2003 - ''Yet Another Ghastly Christmas'' * 2007 - ''The Kindness of Strangers: Kitchen Memoirs'' * 2013 - ''Rain'' * 2014 - ''Landscape with Solitary Figure''

Awards and recognition

* Winner, Air New Zealand Short Story Competition, 1981 * Queen Elizabeth II Literature Committee Writing Bursary, 1989 and 1992 *

University of Auckland , mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work , established = 1883; years ago , endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021) , chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant , vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...

Fellowship in Literature, 1993 * Buddle Finlay Sargeson Fellowship, 1997 * ''The Lonely Margins of the Sea'' was runner up for the Deutz Medal for Fiction in the 1999

Montana 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 ...

* ''Sing to Me, Dreamer'' was a finalist in the 1995 New Zealand Post Book Awards

References

External links

Interview with Shonagh Koea by the Cultural Icons project

Shonagh Koea in the 2001 TV documentary ''The Big Art Trip''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Koea, Shonagh Living people 1939 births 20th-century New Zealand writers 21st-century New Zealand writers People from Taranaki 20th-century New Zealand women writers 21st-century New Zealand women writers