How to get Fired

Stories about the unifying subject of work – how to get it, avoid it or lose it.

Core Life Endeavours? Connie thinks. What are Core Life Endeavours? Is changing into elasticised pants a Core Life Endeavour?

Wry, real and astute, these linked stories are from an exciting new talent.

Mel’s ‘failing at a stupid, screwed-up sales job, selling stupid plastic shelving’. Her days at Pacific Wave Plastics are numbered.

Vic bikes through Christchurch collecting mementoes from the houses she has lived in, while her ex-partner Emma makes the decision to move to Auckland to work at . . . a plastics factory.

And so the chain continues- characters connect obliquely or walk from one story to the next, often oblivious to each other yet united by their daily struggle to negotiate relationships while they try to survive employment, or avoid it, or face getting fired.

Author Biography

EVANA BELICH was born in Wellington and now lives in Auckland where she has worked as a trade union official, a mediator and an employment relations adviser. She has degrees in law, dispute resolution and a Master’s in creative writing from the IIML. She won the Fish Short Story Prize in 2013, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2016 and came second in the Sargeson Prize in 2020.