Shonagh Koea

Shonagh Maureen Koea (born 1939) is a New Zealand fiction writer.^[1]

Shonagh Koea
Born	1939 Taranaki, New Zealand
Occupation	Writer

Biography

Koea was born in Taranaki, New Zealand, in 1939, and grew up in Hastings, Hawke's Bay.^[2][3][4] She became a journalist and began working at the Taranaki Herald newspaper in New Plymouth. There she met and married a fellow journalist, George Koea of Te Āti Awa.^[5][6] She wrote novels as a pastime; however none were published.^[7] 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.^[7] 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.^[3] 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.^[3]

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.^[3] Her narratives have been likened to those of fellow New Zealand writers Katherine Mansfield and Frank Sargeson, which also centred on familiar characters and situations.^[3]

Koea's main publisher is Random House.

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^[3]
• Queen Elizabeth II Literature Committee Writing Bursary, 1989 and 1992^[4]
• University of Auckland Fellowship in Literature, 1993^[8]
• Buddle Finlay Sargeson Fellowship, 1997^[8]
• The Lonely Margins of the Sea was runner up for the Deutz Medal for Fiction in the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards^[3]
• Sing to Me, Dreamer was a finalist in the 1995 New Zealand Post Book Awards^[1]