NZ writer

Kirsty Gunn – 2009

Kirsty Gunn – 2009

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Photo of Kirsty GunnKirsty Gunn was brought up in Wellington and educated at Victoria University (BA Hons) and Oxford University (M.Phil). She is currently the Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Dundee and lives in Scotland and England. Gunn is best known in this country for her novel Rain (Faber 1994) which was made into a film, and for her short stories which have been published internationally including in the collection This Place You Return to is Home (Granta,1999).

Gunn’s other novels are The Keepsake (Granta, 1997), Featherstone (Faber, 2001) and The Boy and the Sea (Faber, 2006) which was named Scottish Book of the Year 2007. Her latest book, 44 Things (Atlantic Books) was published in 2007 and is a collection of writings on Gunn’s domestic and creative life. Gunn has a wide profile in the UK as a writer and reviewer. She is married to David Graham who is the Managing Director of Granta and they have two daughters. She has won the Scottish Arts Council Award and the London Arts Board Award for Writers.

Gunn’s proposed project will combine a number of genres – short story, essay, memoir and history – and look at the subject of Katherine Mansfield.

Jennifer Compton – 2008

Jennifer Compton – 2008

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Photo of Jennifer ComptonJennifer Compton was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1949 and had two poems published in the NZ Listener when she was 15. In 1972 she travelled to Sydney, Australia with her husband Matthew O’Sullivan and attended the Playwrights’ Studio at NIDA. The play she wrote for this course, Crossfire, jointly won the Newcastle Playwriting Competition in 1974 and premiered at the Nimrod Theatre in Sydney and was published by Currency Press. The play was presented by Downstage Theatre in Wellington in the late 70s.

Before her two children were born, in 1983 and 1984, she flew backwards and forwards across the Tasman and worked in both countries. For instance, her radio plays (A Wigwam For A Goose’s Bridle, Morning Glories, Several Local Dandelions) were produced by the ABC and RNZ. And she won the Bank of NZ Katherine Mansfield Award in 1977 for her story The Man Who Died Twice.

Then she moved with her family to Wingello, a small town on the Southern Highlands of NSW, and concentrated on writing poetry and short prose.

In 1995, her poem Blue Leaves won the Robert Harris Poetry Prize and she was awarded the NSW Ministry For The Arts Fellowship, the first time this had been awarded for poetry. During her Fellowship year she wrote a book of poetry, Blue, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Prize, and a stage play, The Big Picture, which premiered at the Griffin Theatre in Sydney and was published by Currency Press. It was performed by Circa Theatre in Wellington in the late 1990’s.

She has been a guest at many Festivals in Australia, including the Sydney Writers’ Festival, the Spring Writing Festival, the Australian Poetry Festival, the Shoalhaven Poetry Festival and the Overload Poetry Festival. In 2005 she was a guest at the International Festival Of Poetry in Genoa and in 2006 was a guest at the Sarajevo Poetry Festival.

Her book of poetry, Parker & Quink, was published by Ginninderra Press in 2005 and her next book of poetry, Barefoot, is ready to go. A book of reflections about travel and place – The Wrong Side Of The Road – is nearly complete. In 2006 she was resident in the Whiting Library Studio in Rome from February to July. And in 2007 she spent a month as a Creative Writing Fellow at the Liguria Study Centre in Bogliasco.

In 2008 she is happily ensconced at the Randell Cottage working on her novel which is set in the Wairarapa and is called All The Time In The World.

Whiti Hereaka – 2007

Whiti Hereaka – 2007

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Whiti HereakaPhoto of Whiti Hereaka is a founding member of Writers Block. Since 2001, Writers Block has been encouraging new writers in theatre particularly those from Maori and Pacific Island descent. In 2002, Hereaka was accepted into the International Institute of Modern Letters, studying toward an MA in Creative writing (Scriptwriting) under the guidance of Ken Duncum. Her thesis, a play called Both Speak I; achieved an MA with Merit. Hereaka’s play Fallow, written as a part of Writers Block, was developed during a workshop in 2002.

Taki Rua productions provided the workshop and dramaturgic support. Hereaka worked with Catherine Fitzgerald, their relationship strengthened by Catherine’s continued dramaturgy during Hereaka’s Young and Hungry commission.

In 2003, the Young and Hungry Trust commissioned Hereaka to write a script for their 2005 season. Collective Agreement was developed over 2004 and was produced in 2005.

Also produced in 2005, Fallow by Tawata productions. After a short, but well received season, Hereaka would like to develop the script further and hopes another run will be produced in the near future.

Hereaka has also written for radio. She has written two episodes of Radio New Zealand’s series Hui Hopping. The Best Bet aired in 2004; and At the Movies aired in 2006.

Her first short film script, Unclaimed Luggage, won the Best Short Film Screenplay award in the E Tuhi! Get Writing awards 2005. It will be produced by Kiwa productions.

Beryl Fletcher – 2006

Beryl Fletcher – 2006

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Photo of Beryl FletcherAs it is for many women writers, writing fiction was a life-long goal which was realised later rather than sooner. Her novels take as their theme the re-writing of established power structures, particularly those of the patriarchy. Born into what she describes as “a socialist working class family” in Auckland, Fletcher graduated in 1979 from Waikato University with a Masters Degree in Sociology.

Living in New Zealand, Australia, England and the USA, she worked in a range of roles, including as a mother, a school dental nurse, and a University lecturer. Her writing career began with a bang when her first novel The Word Burners (1991) won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in the Asia / Pacific region. It was selected as one of the top twenty in the 1991 Listener Women’s Book Festival. Shortly after the publication of her second novel, The Iron Mouth (1994), Fletcher was chosen to represent New Zealand at the prestigious International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, USA. She now holds the title of Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University. Her third novel, The Silicon Tongue (1996) has been translated into Korean. Her fourth novel, The Bloodwood Clan (1999) is set inside an Amish-like cult called The Diggers, who live a 19th Century lifestyle in contemporary rural Australia. Both of these books have been translated into German and are published by Random House in Germany.

While primarily a novelist, Fletcher has published a number of short stories in anthologies including New Australian Writing (1973); New Women’s Fiction 3 (1989); Subversive Acts (1991); and Me and Marilyn Monroe (1993).

In 1999, as Writer in Residence at Waikato University, Fletcher began work on her first non-fiction book, a memoir written in narrative form. Published in 2003, The House at Karamu is a funny and touching memoir in which Fletcher recalls her wartime childhood, her discovery of opera, feminism and more. It tells the story of one life, yet will be familiar to many.

In 2005, Fletcher was chosen to attend Ledig House International Writers’ Residency in upstate New York. Established in 1992, Ledig house has hosted hundreds of writers and translators from over 50 countries. In 2006, Fletcher was awarded the Randell Cottage Writers Residency in Wellington. She is currently writing a collection of short stories and a novella.

Renée – 2005

Renée – 2005

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Photo of RenéeRenée (1929-) Feminist dramatist and fiction writer Renée was born in Napier, and is of Ngati Kahungunu and Irish-English-Scots ancestry. After leaving school at 12, Renée worked in a woollen mill, printing factory and grocery-dairy store before heading off to study, completing a BA at the University of Auckland in 1979. In 1989 Renée was awarded the Burns Fellowship.

Renée started writing for the stage at the age of 50 and, of her more than 10 plays, one of the most successful works Wednesday to Come to in Wellington in June 2005.

She has been involved with community theatre, the Broadsheet Collective, PEN, radio shows, programme organisation for the Globe Theatre in Dunedin, and with script writing for TV.

Renée teaches at the Whitireia Community Polytechnic graduate creative writing course and is completing her sixth novel. During the residency Renée will work on the first draft of a new play.

Michael Harlow – 2004

Michael Harlow – 2004

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Photo of Michael HarlowMichael Harlow (1937- ) was born in the USA of a Greek father and American-Ukrainian mother, travelled extensively in Europe before arriving in New Zealand in 1968. Known primarily for his poetry, which appears in several New Zealand anthologies, he was also in the 1980s an editor of the Caxton Press poetry series and poetry editor of Landfall. Harlow’s sensibility is also identified by a whimsical, questioning persona, and a persistent engagement with the workings of the unconscious.

Harlow first published in New York (Poems, 1965), in Greece (Events, Greece, 1967-1974, 1974) and in England (The Book of Quiet, 1974). Subsequent titles reveal his Eurocentrism: Nothing But Switzerland and Lemonade (1980), the first book of prose poems in New Zealand, Today Is the Piano’s Birthday (1981), Vlaminck’s Tie (1985) and Giotto’s Elephant (1991), shortlisted in the 1992 Book Awards.

Of his time at the Cottage Michael wrote “there is the very considerable benefit that this residency, linked as it is to the French cultural initiative (the ‘French connection’, if I may), adds significantly to raising the consciousness and profile of a national literature to that of an international level. Personally and professionally, I found the partnership with the French both gratifying and helpful.”

Michael went on to say “my own projects: the residency enabled me to almost complete a draft of a new book of poems and short prose texts, Inventing the Real; and in between-times to do some research and preliminary drafting for a further book, commissioned by Electio Press, a special hand-printed, limited edition of translations from the Greek lyric poet Simonides of Keos (5th century B.C.).

Tim Corballis – 2003

Tim Corballis – 2003

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Photo of Tim CorbalisTim Corballis (1971 -) is a fiction writer whose first novel Below was published in 2001. His fiction has also appeared in Sport, The Picnic Virgin, and Spectacular Babies. He has attended both the University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington. It was at Victoria University that Corballis completed Bill Manhire’s Creative Writing Program, (now The International Institute of Modern Letters). At the end of the course, and before the publication of Below Corballis won the Adam Award for his first novel Measurement.

Corballis describes his work in Below and in more recent projects as “a sort of landscape writing which moves beyond issues of national identity and into issues of personal identity.”

His novel Measurement was published in 2002. This work has been described as “a moving meditation on the intricate relationship between life and memory.”

Peter Wells – 2002

Peter Wells – 2002

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Peter WellsPhoto of Peter Wells (1950-2019) won the New Zealand and Reed awards for fiction with his first short story collection, Dangerous Desires (1991). Wells’ second collection, The Duration of a Kiss was published in 1994 and his first novel, Boy Overboard, in 1997.

One of Them! (1999) is a novella narrated by the same character, Jamie, who narrated the novel Boy Overboard. One of Them! was published to coincide with the screening on TV of the film version in September 1999.

Wells is equally known as a film and television director and scriptwriter, most notably for A Death in the Family (1986), which won a major New York award for its drama about the loss of a friend to AIDS; and for the feature film Desperate Remedies (co-written and directed with Stewart Main, starring Lisa Chappell, Jennifer Ward-Leyland and Cliff Curtis), selected to screen at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.

Wells was joint winner (with C.K. Stead) of the 1999 Landfall essay competition. With Stephanie Johnson he is co-founder of the Auckland Writers’ Festival. His memoir, Long Loop Home (2001) won the Biography Award in the 2002 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

His second novel, Iridescence (2003) spans three decades of the Victorian age. Remittance men were sent away from Britain to live in a colony on a small and regular sum – a remittance.

Of his time at the Randell Cottage Wells writes that it was important “because it gave me five months to live without having to think about money. This is always a spell in the life of an author. It was also reassuring. Authors always feel like made up people with a purpose in life which isn’t entirely real, because you don’t go off to work in the morning like other people. A residency makes you feel part of the real world. But it was also important because the cottage is sympathetically placed in a lovely old suburb in Wellington (incidentally Katherine Mansfield live just down the road). The cottage was built about the time I set the book. And it was just down the road from the National Archives, which were an amazing resource for historical research. The book felt blessed by the residency.”

Iridescence was a runner up in the fiction category of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2004 and was the project that Wells undertook during his time at the Randell Cottage.

Peter Wells – Obituary

Peter Wells – Obituary

Posted on by Jane
Peter Wells
Photo by Liz Marsh

We were deeply saddened this week by the death of Peter Wells, the first writer to live and work in the Randell Cottage as the CNZ fellow. Peter was a filmmaker, a novelist, a biographer, an historian. He was instrumental in the establishment of two literary festivals. He wrote, and lived, with extraordinary elegance, grace, and humanity. His most recent work, “Hello Darkness”, released just last week, is his diary as a Stage IV cancer patient, first published on his Facebook page and then as a series of essays on The Spinoff.

The many moving tributes to Peter as an artist and a friend, such as these from Jeremy Hansen and David Herkt give a sense of his contribution to New Zealand film and letters, and to the lives of LGBTQI New Zealanders.