Strong Words 3: The best of the Landfall Essay Competition
By (Author) Lynley Edmeades
Edited by Emma Neale
Otago University Press
Otago University Press
26th July 2023
New Zealand
Paperback
240
Width 165mm, Height 215mm
Strong Words 3 showcases the best of the best of Aotearoa New Zealands contemporary essays from 2021 and 2022. Selected from entries into the Landfall Essay Competition, these essays are explorative, illuminating, provocative, beautifully written and most of all inspiring. Strong Words 3 is packed with Aotearoa New Zealands most compelling new writing on contemporary issues. It is essential reading. A central part of New Zealands literary landscape since 1997, the annual Landfall Essay Competition is Aotearoas most prestigious essay writing competition. Every year these essays open up new avenues of thought, explore new ways of looking at contemporary issues and bring new narratives to the forefront. Past winners include Airini Beautrais, Ashleigh Young, Gregory OBrien, Diana Bridge, Elizabeth Smither, Tracey Slaughter, Laurence Fearnley and Alie Benge. The biennial Strong Words series was launched in 2019 and gathers the most powerful winning, shortlisted and commended Landfall Essay Competition writing within the covers of one book. Among the rich reading featured in Strong Words 3 are the 2021 and 2022 Landfall Essay Competition winners: The New Man by Andrew Dean, a politically and socially complex piece that traces Deans ancestry and examines New Zealands shamefully long record of anti-Semitism; and Lumpectomy by Tina Makereti, a personal and political exploration of the body and its boundaries, and health care (and its boundaries) in Aotearoa. Other essayists featured in Strong Words 3 tackle topics such as grief, lost language, poetic childhood recollections, gender, the long aftermath of colonisation, the nature of traumatic memory, and working as a comedian while solo parenting.
Lynley Edmeades has published two poetry collections and a poetry and art picture book for adults. She teaches poetry and creative writing in the English programme at the University of Otago and is the current editor of Landfall. Emma Neale has published six novels and five poetry collections, and edited several anthologies. She was editor of Landfall 20182021 and judged of the Landfall Essay Competition during that period. She was selecting editor for Strong Words (2019) and Strong Words #2 (2021).