Vividwater is a darkly funny novel set in a near-future AotearoaNZ that is running out of clean water. Alex toils in workplace dystopia, with a huge gulf between the water-rich few with watercards and water-poor scavvos who can’t access enough safe water. It was shortlisted twice in the Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize.
Vividwater is a darkly funny novel set in a near-future AotearoaNZ that is running out of clean water. Alex toils in workplace dystopia, with a huge gulf between the water-rich few with watercards and water-poor scavvos who can’t access enough safe water. It was shortlisted twice in the Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize.
In a futureworld, supplies of drinkable water are depleted, except for a few hydrospheres.A huge gulf grows between the water-rich few with watercards and water-poorscavvos.
Alex is amnemopath, a memory machine for a senior manager in water export trading,feeding facts into her boss’s earpiece and eavesdropping. Her job isn’t noble,but she needed the water allowance.
When an oldboyfriend, Lawrence, returns, working for the main Chinese water company, Alexdreams of escape. But Lawrence exposes his company’s marketing fraud and isdisappeared back to China.
Alex isousted from her company, on the grounds of fraternising with the companyLawrence worked for. Her watercard turned off, Alex finds a way to fight back.Her bosses underestimate her, but as a human memory machine, she knows enoughto blackmail them.
Now shejust has to get to China to find Lawrence.
Runner-up for Grindstone Literary Prize 2022 Short-listed for Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize 2024 Short-listed for Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize 2022
JacquelineOwens lives in Wellington. Vividwater was longlisted for Grindstone Literary International Novel Prize, and shortlisted twice in the Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize. It is the first in a three-partseries.
Excerpts and shortstories from other manuscripts have been published in online journals. A screenplay, The Floating World, won the NewZealand Writers Guild (NZWG) Best Unproduced Screenplay Competition andanother, Three Gardens, wasa quarterfinalist in the Nicholl and Blue Cat competitions. A youngadult novel, Bluest Moon,was published by New Women’s Press, in the 90s
Outsidewriting, she has had mnemopath-like jobs in government and made the most ofdegrees in Classics and Political Science, as a grand-finalist on MastermindNew Zealand, with subjects The Chronicles of Narnia and Classical GreekMythology. Whiledoing a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Screen and Television, Universityof Southern California, Los Angeles, she was a university teaching assistantand assessed screenplays for production companies.
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