The Red Queen

‘It’s the first time in forty years. There are snow scenes from all around New Zealand—snow-covered houses, playgrounds, a group of children sliding down a hill on signs, the bucket fountain on Cuba Street lightly dusted.’ In her first collection of stories, Gemma Bowker-Wright leads us into the phases of transition and transformation in people’s lives: a dream job, a rare afternoon between son and father, a man losing his wife to Alzheimer’s, a first snow. Like the Red Queen of Through the Looking-Glass, many of these characters are running hard to stay in the same place, but moving ever forward. Their stories, which echo stories from evolution, ecology, and meteorology, form a deeply perceptive and captivating first book.

Author Biography

Gemma Bowker-Wright was brought up in the Hawkes Bay and currently lives in Wellington. She has a BSc and MSc from Victoria University and currently works at the Ministry for Primary Industries. In 2011 she completed the MA from the International Institute of Modern Letters and her short stories have been published in Metro, Sport and Hue & Cry. She was the winner of the 2010 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition and the 2011 BNZ Katherine Mansfield Competition for short fiction. The Red Queen is her first book.