Shaw, Tina
IN BRIEF
Tina Shaw is a novelist, short story writer and editor. Most of Shaw’s novels are aimed at adults, though she has also written fiction for children. She has edited a number of significant collections of New Zealand writing and her stories have appeared in magazines and teenage anthologies, and have been broadcast on radio. Shaw has received many awards for her work including the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers Residency.
FROM THE oxford companion TO new zealand literature
Shaw, Tina (1961– ), born in Auckland, spent her early years in Matangi, near Hamilton, and Christchurch, before returning to Auckland. She won the Newcomer’s Award in the 1991 Mobil Dominion Sunday Times short story competition, and other stories have appeared in magazines and teenage anthologies, and have been broadcast on radio. Her first novel, Birdie (1996), won praise, particularly for its dynamic portrayal of an alienated young woman working in an Auckland strip club. Her second was Dreams of America (1997).
KI
Author entry from The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature,
edited by Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (1998).
Additional Information
City of Reeds (2000) tells of three sisters growing up in small town New Zealand. Their mother, dissatisfied with a husband traumatised by service in Vietnam, runs off with a local accountant, and the family savings. The girls are left to deal with the consequences in the claustrophobic confines of a small community.
In a Listener review of City Of Reeds, Heather Murray wrote: 'Dreams Of America showed that she was not a one-novel wonder, and her latest, City of Reeds, consolidates her right to be called a major literary talent'.
Tina Shaw edited A Passion for Travel (1998), a collection of travel writing by New Zealanders. In 1999 she was a Buddle Finlay Sargeson Fellow and in 2001 received the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers Residency.
Shaws fourth book Paradise (2002) explores the ripple effects of terrorism and the elusive search for utopia. Margie Thomson, in a NZ Herald review of Paradise, called it '...a captivating contemporary allegory about our bid for absolute dominance of the planet, and of sciences infatuation with extending life at all costs'.
Shaw is the 2005 Writer In Residence at the University of Waikato. Her fifth novel, The Black Madonna, was published in 2005 by Penguin.
Brendas Planetary Holiday (2006), was published by Puffin. This was her first novel for children followed by Fluff Helps Out (Puffin, 2006). Shaw, alongside Jack Ross, edited the anthology Myths of the 21st Century (Reed, 2006). Her short story Julia appears in The Best of New Zealand Fiction, Volume Three (Vintage, 2006).
About Griffen’s Heart (Longacre, 2008) is Shaw’s first novel for young adults, and is the story of a teenage boy who is waiting for life-saving heart surgery.
