News

Fourth-year University of Otago student Marie Hodgkinson has won a major New Zealand literary award for her online publication Semaphore Magazine.

Semaphore won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Production/Publication, and narrowly missed out on the award for Best Collected Work. The Sir Julius Vogel Awards are named for a former New Zealand prime minister, who wrote what was probably this country’s first full-length science fiction novel in 1889, and exist to celebrate achievements in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres.
   Hodgkinson, who is in the final year of a combined BA(Hons) in English and Classics, started the magazine in her first year. Four year later it remains the only paying publication dedicated to short ‘speculative fiction’ (which encompasses fantasy, sci fi, and horror) in New Zealand.
   The magazine is published four times a year, usually featuring six stories, and receives funding through OUSA, allowing it to pay writers chosen for publication. A yearly anthology of the very best work is published in hard copy and sold via its website, although Hodgkinson is hopeful that it will also be picked up by independent bookshops this year.
   Contributing writers have gone on to win several literary awards, with two contributors winning categories at the Sir Julius Vogel Awards. Ripley Patton won the Best Short Story award for “Corrigan’s Exchange,” which was published in Semaphore’s June 2009 issue, while Simon Petrie, whose short story “The Fridge Whisperer” will appear in this year’s anthology, received the Best New Talent Award.
   Hodgkinson told Critic that the stories received were usually of a high quality, although in the past she had occasionally received the odd ‘disturbing’ story featuring details more suited to the pages of Playboy. Nowadays a volunteer in England works as the ‘slush editor’, screening the submitted work to weed out sub-standard (and pornographic) pieces. Local writers are encouraged to submit their works to the magazine, with Hodgkinson saying that “its always great to read work by local talent.”
   Hodgkinson, who is the Critic sub-editor, and this week’s Guest Editor, will receive an impressive-looking trophy modelled by Weta Workshops for her win. The magazine is available free online at semaphoremagazine.com.