Lizard's literary scholarship
Lizard Crimson (Year 13) has been awarded the inaugural Copyright Licensing New Zealand (CLNZ) Secondary School Leavers Scholarship 2026 for her short story 'If Tattered Threads Compose Me, Do Wires Uphold Your Spine'.
The scholarship recognises outstanding young writers and attracted entries from talented students across New Zealand.
Her win came as a complete surprise. "I thought it was worth a shot, but I wasn't expecting to win as I know there are a lot of amazing young writers in this country," says Lizard, who is a devoted member of the school's Creative Writing Club.
Her story explores themes of loneliness, belonging and friendship through a speculative fiction lens. The protagonist, a young girl named Konnie, has threads and wires hanging from her skin, and feels every painful tug when others unknowingly step on them. Lizard describes these physical extensions as a metaphor for feeling "othered" and broken.
As the story unfolds, she meets someone else who carries their own visible signs of difference.
"As a crafts person, the idea of threads hanging off a person as part of their skin has been in my head for a while," Lizard said. "The protagonist is very lonely, but as the story progresses she finds that she's not so strange and that she has a friend."
Rather than creating two identical characters, Lizard wanted to show that shared experiences of otherness can exist in different forms.
"Her friend Maia has metal pieces that clank and fall off her. It's about finding someone else who shares the feeling of otherness, but it was important to me that they weren't exactly the same."
The judges, writer Michelle Elvy and editor Shelley Burne-Field, praised the work for its imaginative world-building and emotional depth.
"A wonderful piece of speculative fiction, full of visceral description," they wrote. "Beginning with the title as a question, this work takes us into a world both familiar and unfamiliar. We become more curious as we keep reading, and although the tone is casual and even light, it deals with serious topics."
The Creative Writing Club recently held a book signing and reading to celebrate her success. "The Club is a wonderful place to have community with other writers. It's really supportive."
Lizard plans to use the scholarship funding to continue developing her writing, whether through further creative writing study or university education.
For Lizard, the scholarship is recognition of years of creative effort and encouragement to create stories that explore what it means to be connected, and sharing a deeply human message: none of us are as alone as we think.
