New Zealand Writers

SHAW, Tina

Birdie won praise, particularly for its dynamic portrayal of an alienated young woman working in an Auckland strip club.

• From The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature
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Author entry from The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, edited by Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (1998). About the Companion entries View list of Companion contributors

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

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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 Writer's Residency.

Shaw's 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 science's 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.

Brenda's 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).