At the Bay | I Te Kokoru: Hauntings

Part of the Katherine Mansfield House & Garden 2024 Open Day

Michelle Elvy and Harry Ricketts are thrilled to present this year’s At the Bay | I Te Kokoru celebration and awards. At the Bay | I Te Kokoru provides a platform for Aotearoa New Zealand writers of the short form, from short stories to hybrid, from creative nonfiction small stories to translations and translingual work, from flash fiction to micro.

In 2024, we explore hauntings. The event opens with readings from At the Bay | I Te Kokoru 2024 authors and books published this year by Janis Freegard, Jenna Heller, Sharni Wilson and a collection of Ōtepoti writers celebrating their city and Janet Frame. We’ll also announce the winners of the 2024 Sparkling Prose competition, with stories ‘haunted’.

 

Opening sentences from this year’s shortlisted stories – find out the winners on October 13

 

The house was hidden from the street, so she almost missed the turn.

The summer house

 

one, two, three, four, five, six, seven

eight.

This is how it starts. The pots are at boiling point, and it’s a Friday, and his mother is laying the table…

Picking Up Sticks

 

'You must get bored, living here on your own.'

We start and end with family

 

Good looking bloke wasn’t he / yeah / malleable hair / 

rare / yeah, rare

 

The window is open a crack only, but it is just enough to make the gauzy curtain flutter. 

Séance

 

There is a woman rotting in the front room of the Torea Street house. 

           four hauntings from the colonies

 

Image: 133 Tinakori Road, formerly 75 Tinakori Road, photographed in 1967 by Charles Fearnley prior to demolition. This was Katherine Mansfield's family home from 1898 to 1907, it was later turned into flats and then demolished to make way for the Wellington Urban Motorway. Can you spot the child in the window? Courtesy of Wellington City Libraries, reference 50003-1371.