Eighteen-year-old Shima Jack has taken out the 2022 Sargeson Prize for best short story by a secondary school student - for the second year running.
Shima Jack Photo: Supplied
“I just had days afterwards just sitting there in disbelief, just random moments that I’d question reality,” Jack tells Jesse Mulligan.
- Read Shima Jack's 2021 award-winning short story here.
She’s been writing for most of her life and says it’s a very valuable outlet for self-expression.
As a young child, she read everything she could get her hands on.
“Something that inspired me to write at a young age was an American children’s writing magazine called Stone Soup, which has short fiction and poetry from really young writers.”
Her entry for the Sargeson secondary schools short story competition, Fourth Wall, is a break from her usual style.
“It’s about the intricacies of male and female relationships, especially within teenagers.”
Despite still being in high school, this year Jack took an English paper and a Zoology paper at Otago University. She also co-runs the Dunedin Youth Writer’s Association with two other students from her school.
Earlier this year the group released its first issue of what will become a monthly writing anthology called Minor Gospel.
Jack tells Jesse she crafts her writing much like others her age – on her phone.
“I do spend time on my phone. In the Dunedin Youth Writer’s Association, a lot of writers they write on their phone, they read on their phone.”
In fact, like writers in her peer group, she stores ideas for new work in her phone’s notes app.
She uses the competitions as deadlines to finish a piece she may have been working on. Once the inspiration comes, the words flow.
For placing first place in the competition Jack took home a $500 prize as well as a week's summer writing residency in Waikato and publication of her piece on Newsroom.
