Viv Smith, a Cantabrian at heart now based in Wellington, mentally scribbles in the margins of Board papers. She grieves for the loss of words like ‘twixt’ and groans at bureaucratic use of words like ‘tranche’. She was awarded Hagley Writers’ Institute Margaret Mahy Prize in 2012 and attributes the tutors’ encouragement to apply for the MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University’s IIML completed in 2014. She has published in Turbine, 4th Floor, Takahē, Blackmail Press, Deep South, and Junctures. Some days, she wishes she was a pirate; on others she’s too busy swabbing decks to find her cutlass.