A lesbian-themed short story – written by a straight girl – has won in the young writer's section of the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Awards. 17-year-old Natasha Lewis, an Epsom Girls Grammar student, is the author of The Unsaid Things, a love story between a Pacific Islander and a Pakeha. "I wanted to show the boundaries between friendship and another kind of relationship and how those get blurred," she says. Lewis was born in India, and moved to New Zealand when she was 8. Unlike the characters in her story, she's not lesbian, a Pacific Islander, or a Pakeha, but it's a common experience that allows her to write believably – she knows it feels "to fit in but not fit in". She says after she'd written the story her mother kept asking if she was a lesbian, which she found funny, but the curiosity has been replaced with pride since Lewis won the prestigious award.
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Thursday, 28th October 2004 - 12:00pm