On Friday 8 March 2024, Aurora College had the pleasure of welcoming two authors to talk to The Hub, a Friday program offered at school. The Hub welcomed these two authors, Sharon Reece and Pauline Smith, curious to learn about their experience in writing as The Hub is filled with many aspiring authors.
“Writing is my passion.” Sharon ‘Shaz’ Reece was a former student here at Aurora College, she expressed that her own English teacher, Kate Rogers, was the person who pushed her to write, letting her find her love for it. Shaz continued to write for herself and this eventually led to the Southern Institute of Technology, where she then pursued journalism. The first time she saw her name as a byline she realised she would not be able to get enough of writing. Shaz has a passion for research and telling untold stories, one of her favourite websites to use is ‘Papers Past’.
Shaz told us that, as part of a research for a story, she discovered a tragic crime, a murder that happened in Invercargill in 1908 that nobody knew anything about. It took her six months to write an article about it. “An article has a set structure. Learn the rules and then it is easy to write an article.” Shaz proceeded to gain the Top Student Prize for her Journalism course and The Southland Times Top Student Award as a result of this article and it is now in the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand.
Now, Shaz is a part of the One Foundation ‘Te Rourou’ as a researcher and writer. And as a result of this, Shaz also has been part of the laptop initiative for seniors at Aurora College. This has been such a huge benefit for us seniors as it has allowed us to bring our school work home and given us the freedom of having our own assigned laptop. Shaz told us that she has a laptop full of notes and journals with notes around the house, reinforcing that it is important to make writing meaningful.
Sharon told us, in closing her talk, that she has never had to leave Invercargill to follow her dreams, “There is no reason that each of you cannot follow a similar path.”
Pauline Smith is a former student of Kingswell College, which is one of the previous schools at our Aurora College site. Pauline explained that she was really not the best student but likes to use this as an example to show us that no matter your past you are able to become something more, to be proud of what you can and have achieved.
It was almost forty years of age when Pauline first heard about The Dawn Raids. Finding out about this so late in her life made her wildly upset as she was never taught anything about this significant time in New Zealand's history. It was the outrage of this information not being made known to her that fueled her passion to start writing. Pauline tells us that when writing this book she spent time doing immense research and then travelled to Riverton and wrote the entire book over the short course of three weeks.
‘Dawn Raid’ was Pauline Smith's first book, this book has been a huge success all over New Zealand, not only in the sales and popularity, but the knowledge now spread about a serious, important time in New Zealand's Polynesian Community's history, giving the young people of today a better sense of the racism and discrimination and how we can challenge it.
Pauline told us that we write to “live the life we want” and to “tell stories and inspire others.” We also write to design people and characters that may represent us, or others that we know along with settings and situations that we ourselves have been in. But most importantly, we write to bring joy, not just to the reader but to ourselves, so that we can be proud of what we create and how we make others feel.
Madi Kennard and Sarah Costigan-Noble
