Book of the Week: One winner of the PM award reviews another

By newsroom - Barbara Else | Posted: Tuesday Nov 18, 2025

Barbara Else, who won the $60,000 Prime Minister’s literature award last week, reviews previous winner Elizabeth Smither (and Ingrid Horrocks)

At a dinner table perhaps 40 years ago, someone introduced the topic of hobbies. Another woman said to me, like your writing, Barbara. Quick as a wolf I said, It isn’t a hobby, it is serious and the topic dropped. Perhaps I should have been kinder to her but local women writers were hardly a rarity. There is a multitude now, new and established, Pākehā, Māori and many other backgrounds using fiction, poetry and non-fiction to examine the female life.

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