Anna Taylor

Anna Taylor is a New Zealand fiction writer whose short stories examine physical surroundings, uneasy relationships, and moments when ordinary routines shift. Relief, published by Victoria University Press in 2009, was her debut collection. Its eleven stories place characters in understated situations, including an encounter with an intruder, a child responding to a parent’s new relationship, and a couple attempting an unplanned weekend away. Weather, houses, movement, and bodily sensation carry much of the emotional pressure, allowing insight to emerge without explanatory conclusions. Relief won the 2010 NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction. Taylor completed an MA in creative writing at Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters, where an earlier manuscript won the 2006 Adam Foundation Prize. Before adopting her mother’s surname, she published as Anna Horsley in journals and anthologies. Her later work includes the novel Cycle. The collection’s local settings and compressed form place Relief within New Zealand short fiction while giving each story a distinct psychological situation.