Dr Airini Beautrais | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Airini Beautrais in 2021 | |
| Born | 1982 (age 41–42) New Zealand |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | Victoria University of Wellington |
| Notable works | Secret Heart Bug Week & Other Stories |
| Notable awards | NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction |
Airini Jane Beautrais (born 1982) is a poet and short-story writer from New Zealand.
Beautrais was born in 1982 and grew up in Auckland and Whanganui.[1] She studied creative writing and ecological science at the Victoria University of Wellington.[2] In 2016 she received her PhD in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, under doctoral advisors Harry Ricketts and James Brown.[3][4][5]
As of 2021[update], Beautrais lives in Whanganui with her two sons.[6]
Beautrais's writing draws on her personal experiences, and is often set in her hometown of Whanganui.[7]
Beautrais has published four collections of poetry with Victoria University Press: Secret Heart (2006); Western Line (2011); Dear Neil Roberts (VUP, 2014); and Flow: Whanganui River Poems (2017).[2] In 2020 Victoria University Press published a collection of her short stories, titled Bug Week & Other Stories.[8] The collection had taken her ten years to write, and she has said it was inspired by "the female experience, from girlhood through to middle age and end of life".[6][9]
She has been published in the Best New Zealand Poems series (2016)[10] and literary journals, including Overland, [11] and Penduline.[12]
Beautrais's first collection of poetry, Secret Heart, was awarded the NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry at the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.[13]
Dear Neil Roberts was longlisted in the poetry category of the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Award.[14]
In 2016 she was shortlisted for the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize.[15]
Beautrais won the 2016 Landfall Essay Competition.[3]
She won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for Bug Week & Other Stories, receiving an award of NZ$57,000, New Zealand's largest cash book prize.[9][16] Kiran Dass, the category's convener of judges, said of the book: "Casting a devastating and witty eye on humanity at its most fallible and wonky, this is a tightly-wound and remarkably assured collection". It was only the second short-story collection to win the top fiction prize in the history of the New Zealand Book Awards.[9]
