Written Words Prevail

New Zealand author Craig Cliff has won the Commonwealth Writers Prize best first book award, worth £5000,, for his short story collection A Man Melting, which judges called “highly entertaining and thought-provoking”. Glasgow-born Aminatta Forna won the Commonwealth writers’ prize for her story of postwar Sierra Leone, The Memory of Love. Chair of the judging panel Nicholas Hasluck said that The Memory of Love and A Man Melting both “demonstrate the irreducible power of the written word at a time of rapid global change and uncertainty”. Cliff writes a fortnightly column for in the weekend Dominion Post. He is also a policy analyst at the Education Ministry in Wellington.