Nicolas Fargues – 2016
The 2016 French writer in residence is Nicolas Fargues, author of ten novels including J’étais derrière toi – I was Behind You (Pushkin Press, London) – which has been translated into fifteen different languages. Fargues was born in 1972 in the Paris region and spent his childhood between Cameroon, Lebanon and Corsica. He studied modern French literature at La Sorbonne University and completed his master’s thesis on the life and work of Egyptian author Georges Henein. Fargues’ first novel Le Tour du propriétaire was published in 2000. He has worked in Indonesia, Paris, Yaoundé and Madagascar.
Nicolas has published two books drawn from his stay in New Zealand: Écrire à l’élastique (2017), an exchange of fictional letters with writer Iegor Gran, and Je ne suis pas une heroine (2018), a novel.
Nicolas is now based in Dunedin, where he is pursuing a doctorate in Francophone literature at the University of Otago.
Born in 1973, David Fauquemberg lives in the Cotentin area of Normandy. A novelist, he has published work in magazines such as XXI, Géo and Long Cours. He is also a translator (of Nadine Gordimer, R. L. Stevenson, James Meek, Willy Vlautin). The travel bug bit while he was studying literature, taking him to Patagonia and Lappland and sailing across the Atlantic. He went on to taught philosophy for a few months, before hitting the road again and spending two years in Australia. This provided the inspiration for his first novel, Nullarbor (Hoëbeke, 2007), winner of the Nicolas Bouvier Prize for travel writing. Mal tiempo (Fayard, 2009), which has a boxing theme and is set in Cuba, was awarded the Millepages Prize, the Prix des Hebdos en Région Prize and the City of Caen Prize. Manuel el Négro, published by Fayard in 2013, is the result of a long stay in the world of Andalucia’s flamenco gypsies.
Timaru-based writer Owen Marshall has published or edited almost thirty books, including novels, short stories and poetry including Living as a Moon, Watch of Gryphons, Carnival Sky, The Larnachs and Drybread. His 1999 novel Harlequin Rex won the 2000 Deutz Medal for Fiction at the Montana Book Awards. He has held fellowships at the universities of Canterbury and Otago and in Menton, France. Marshall is an adjunct professor at the University of Canterbury, which awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters in 2002. In 2000, he became an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature and in 2012, a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. In 2013 Marshall was awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in fiction.
Witi Ihimaera is a novelist, short story writer, anthologist and librettist, was born in Gisborne. He is of Te Whanau A Kai and Ngati Porou descent with close affiliations to Te Aitanga A Mahaki, Rongowhakaata, Tūhoe, Te Whakatohea, Te Whanau-a-Apanui and Ngati Kahungunu. His works include Tangi, The Matriarch, The Whale Rider, (which was made in to a film by Niki Caro in 2002), the semi-autobiographical Nights in the Gardens of Spain, and The Parihaka Woman. A memoir, Maori Boy has just been released by Random House. Ihimaera became a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2004, for services to literature.
Thanh-Van Tran-Nhut was born in Hue, Viet-Nam, in 1962. Her family moved to the US in 1968, then three years later moved to France. After finishing high school in France, she went back to the US to attend university. Thanh-Van earned a BA in Math and Physics from Whitman College and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.
Tina Makereti is the author of two books: a novel, Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings (Vintage 2014), and a short story collection, Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa (Huia Publishers 2010), which won the Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards Fiction Prize 2011. In 2009 she was the recipient of the Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing (non-fiction), and in the same year received the Pikihuia Award for Best Short Story Written in English. In October 2012 Tina was Writer in Residence at the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, and in 2013 she was Curator-at-Large for the New Zealand Film Archive. Tina has a PhD Creative Writing from Victoria University, and teaches creative writing at Massey and Victoria Universities. She is of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Ati Awa, Ngāti Maniapoto, Pākehā and, in all probability, Moriori descent. She usually lives on the Kāpiti Coast with her partner, daughters, unruly dog, and three bossy chickens.
Estelle Nollet was born in 1978 in the Central African Republic and moved to France a few years later. Following her studies as a graphic artist in Paris, she worked in advertising in France and elsewhere, before taking up a second career as a diver and working as an instructor in a number of countries (Australia, the US, New Zealand, Mexico…). She says diving into the world of silence is like discovering a book in movement where there’s a new story happening mutely every second.
Denis Welch is a poet, novelist, journalist, editor, media commentator, columnist and biographer. The Wellingtonian has also been described as a ‘serial maker of puns’.
Author, poet and playwright Vivienne Plumb was born in Australia and lived in Wellington for over thirty years before heading north in 2008. She has published four collections of poetry, two chapbooks of poetry, a novella, a novel and several playscripts, and her most recent book is poetry chapbook The Cheese and Onion Sandwich and Other New Zealand Icons (Seraph Press, 2011). Plumb’s awards include the 1993 Bruce Mason Playwriting Award for Love Knots (1994) and the Hubert Church Award for a first book of fiction for The Wife Who Spoke Japanese in her Sleep (1993).