Paula Morris on compiling a new Māori short story anthology

Dr Paula Morris. Photo / Paul Taylor

When we’re children, we listen to stories. They’re often the first things we learn to read and a way we learn how to write. My favourite part of the day at primary school was hearing our teacher read aloud. These days, when I visit schools or appear at writers’ festivals, I observe again the power of stories to entrance listeners and engage their imaginations, whatever the age of the audience.

Although some adult fiction readers and their military units – the book club – say they prefer to read novels, I’ve been a fan of short stories all my life. Like a film, a story offers an intense, short-term relationship, an immersion that may entertain or bemuse or provoke you. Even if the style or subject is challenging, readers are less likely to cast a story aside than a sizeable novel demanding our loyal and dogged attention night after night.

For aspiring writers, stories are often a starting point. My own first published works, both in the United States and in New Zealand, were short stories. For Māori writers, short stories have been important initial publications – like J.C. (Jacquie) Sturm’s story For All the Saints, published in 1955 in a Ministry of Māori Affairs journal and a decade later in New Zealand Short Stories, edited by C.K. Stead. With that story, Sturm became the first-ever Māori writer to appear in a New Zealand anthology.

A young Witi Ihimaera read For All the Saints and realised, for the first time, that a literary career for a Māori writer was possible. His book Pounamu, Pounamu, published in 1972, was the first-ever story collection by a Māori writer. Patricia Grace’s debut was the story collection Waiariki in 1975, the first-ever book of fiction by a Māori woman. Both writers went on to publish many acclaimed novels, but both continued writing short stories.

Fifty years later Māori fiction is thriving. Novels steal the spotlight, of course, with big wins at the Ockham NZ Book Awards for Becky Manawatu (Auē) and Whiti Hereaka (Kurangaituku). This year two of the four fiction finalists were Māori writers trying their hands at novels for the first time: screenwriter Michael Bennett with Better the Blood and historian Monty Soutar with the bestselling Kāwai.

Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories, ed by Paula Morris

But the fiction winner of the best first book prize was another Māori writer, Anthony Lapwood, for his superb story collection, Home Theatre. I was well aware of his book, because I’d already selected one of its longest stories for an anthology I was editing. After almost two years of work – planning, scouting, selecting and editing – that anthology has been published. It’s called Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories, and features the work of 27 writers. Thanks to the expertise of Darryn Joseph, four te reo writers are included as well.

Ever the story fan, I conceived it as a celebration and showcase of talent, with stories by writers at all stages of life and career, from famous names and award-winners to new voices and outliers. Five of the writers – Lapwood, Jack Remiel Cottrell, Emma Hislop, Colleen Maria Lenihan and Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall – have recently published debut collections. Some writers in the anthology have yet to publish a book. The two oldest writers are Grace and Ihimaera, still publishing artful, accomplished short stories. I realised that they were writing and publishing and winning awards before some of the book’s other writers were born.

The editorial process for Hiwa included an open call that resulted in more than 100 submissions, and almost half the writers in the anthology are open-call selections. I wasn’t familiar with the work of Aramiha Harwood, who lives in Australia, or Nick Twemlow, who lives in the US, so I’m delighted that they sent me stories. The contrast between Twemlow’s experiment in form, the final story in Hiwa, and Shelley Burne-Field’s anthology opener, written in a more familiar oral-storytelling style, speaks to the diversity of the book, and of the range of contemporary Māori writing.

This is quite a contrast to Margaret Orbell’s 1970 anthology Contemporary Māori Writing. Orbell observed that the gathered authors had “much in common in their experience of life and in their writing” and a “similarity of approach to their subject matter”. Hiwa shows how much times have changed, and how much the confidence and ingenuity of Māori story writers has grown.

The anthology’s title is a reference to Hiwa-i-te-rangi, the ninth and final star in the Matariki cluster. It’s to Hiwa that we make wishes, hoping for a fruitful season. That’s how I see things here in 2023, almost 60 years since Sturm broke ground with For All the Saints. This is a time of vigorous growth, of work by Māori writers – urban, suburban, rural, and roaming the world – that demand our attention, and remind us of the joys of the power of stories.

Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories, ed by Paula Morris (Auckland University Press, $45), is out now.