Porter wins inaugural Michael Gifkins Prize

Auckland-based writer Ruby Porter has won the inaugural Michael Gifkins Prize for an unpublished novel for her novel Attraction.

Chosen from a shortlist of three, Attraction centres on an unnamed narrator—‘haunted by the spectre of her emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend, her complicated family background and New Zealand’s colonial history’—on a road trip between Auckland, Whāngārā and Levin with her best friend and her girlfriend.

Porter receives a publishing contract with Text and a NZ$10,000 (A$9186) advance against royalties.

‘Attraction peels back the landscape to reveal deeper truths,’ said Judge Lloyd Jones. ‘The writer is right inside her material—a road trip that delivers a political and sexual coming-of-age narrative. The book is a slow-burning fuse that brims with intensely felt experience.’

Text publisher and judge Michael Heyward said the winning entry ‘reveals an exciting new talent, and suggest that the Michael Gifkins Prize has an important role to play in New Zealand writing’.

The prize honours the late Michael Gifkins—literary agent, writer, critic and publishing consultant—and is funded through a sponsorship from Gifkins’ family and Text Publishing.

Porter accepted the prize on 19 May at an event at the Auckland Writers Festival.

Text will publish Attraction in 2019.

Category: Local news