[2] In 2016 she received her PhD in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, under doctoral advisors Harry Ricketts and James Brown.

[7] Beautrais has published four collections of poetry with Victoria University Press: Secret Heart (2006); Western Line (2011); Dear Neil Roberts (VUP, 2014); and Flow: Whanganui River Poems (2017).

[8] The collection had taken her ten years to write, and she has said it was inspired by "the female experience, from girlhood through to middle age and end of life".

[9][16] Kiran Dass, the category's convener of judges, said of the book: "Casting a devastating and witty eye on humanity at its most fallible and wonky, this is a tightly-wound and remarkably assured collection".

It was only the second short-story collection to win the top fiction prize in the history of the New Zealand Book Awards.