Man in the Running

Wellington author Craig Cliff’s debut short story collection, A Man Melting is in contention for this year’s Commonwealth £5, best first book award. Cliff is up against South African writer Cynthia Jele’s Happiness is a Four-Letter Word, Canadian writer Katrina Best’s Bird Eat Bird and UK novelist Mischa Hiller’s Sabra Zoo. The Listener’s Siobhan Harvey said of Cliff’s collection: “A Man Melting examines all the big questions of life — birth, infancy, adolescence, violence, parenthood, death — and does so in fresh and intriguing ways. Given the youth of its author, this fact, like the book itself, is an astounding feat.”