PhD candidate John Prins had his first book, titled 'Pastoral Care', published recently by Otago University Press.
Fatherhood has provided some of the inspiration for PhD candidate John Prins’ recently published book of short stories.
Pastoral Care is the second book of short stories in the new Landfall Tauraka Short Story series, published by Otago University Press (OUP). The first collection in the series was Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn, which was published last year.
The nine stories in Pastoral Care look at familial relationships and the everyday, routine actions associated with them. All stories take place in modern-day Aotearoa and were somewhat inspired by John’s own life as a father to two children.
The cover of Pastoral Care.
“I do not necessarily live in my art, I live in my life, but the two worlds probably dissolve into one another at the edges. I tend to give the writing process over to my imagination, and what happens in there is what my PhD thesis is becoming about.”
Half of Pastoral Care was written while John was completing his masters degree. Upon completion of the degree, he says he continued to work the manuscript to make it “better and better” before sending versions to publishers.
“I got rejected, like, heaps of rejections.”
That is until it ended up in the hands of Dr Sue Wootton, Publisher at OUP, which was “fortunate,” he says, because she is a great advocate of short stories, and short story writers.
“With any kind of book, it’s getting the manuscript in the right hands at the right time. Sue liked it and it was to her taste.”
John left his job as an English teacher at a high school in Auckland in November last year to begin his PhD in Creative Writing, by distance.
“I just felt like I needed a change. I really love the act of teaching, I love being in a classroom because you learn more when you’re teaching, but it’s hard to balance creative work with full-time work, especially as teaching is so dynamic,” he says.
“I really love writing. I found I couldn’t really write creatively and teach, as the teaching took up way too much of my creative energy.”
He plans to keep up his teaching registration but is unsure if he will return once his PhD is complete.
Dr Lynley Edmeades, left, with PhD candidate John Prins. Lynley is one of John's supervisors. The pair are pictured at the official launch of the newly named Landfall Tauraka literary journal and opening of the exhibition celebrating the nearly 80 years of the publication.
John had planned on writing his PhD about Landfall as a historical document of Aotearoa’s literature, paying particularly close attention to the short stories. Since then, his ideas have shifted, and he knows they may well shift again.
“It's always changing, but at the moment I’m thinking about the poetics of water. I'm kind of interested in the way that writers use water to express themselves or to create an aesthetic response in the reader.”
He is specifically looking at the writing of Aotearoa authors Kirsty Gunn, Pip Adam and Tina Makereti.
Half of his thesis will critically examine literature, while the second half will likely be a novella or another collection of short stories.
The critical component, as well as looking forward, sees him “looking back” to his collection of stories in Pastoral Care.
“I’m trying to understand what that was, how that came out of me and how I managed to write that.”
He is also trying to understand his creative process.
“Why my creative process is – not like how I sit down and write, but actually ‘what’s happening in my brain?’, the imaginative process. Where the stories come from and how they form.”
John will attend the Landfall Symposium in Ōtepoti in October celebrating the 250th edition.
As he has read all of the short stories published in Landfall, he was asked to write an essay for the symposium looking at how children have been depicted.
He is looking forward to the opportunity to catch up with his supervisors Associate Professor Christine Prentice and Dr Lynley Edmeades.
-Kōrero by Koren Allpress, Communications Adviser