Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship - Fact and fiction to take up residence

Two of the country’s leading writers from the worlds of fiction and journalism have been selected for this year’s Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship.

The two new fellows, fiction writer Sue Orr (pic right) and fellow fiction writer and Sunday Star-Times assistant editor Mark Broatch, will each have access to five months at the Sargeson Centre, adjacent to the University of Auckland, along with a $20,000 grant.

Buddle Findlay National Chairman, Peter Chemis, says the firm was delighted at the calibre of writers applying for the Fellowship, and of the programme’s vital role in developing literary talent in New Zealand.
“We hope the Fellowship will give this year’s writers the financial freedom and personal space they need to develop their work in a concerted manner,” he said.

Auckland-based Orr, who takes up her residency this month, has been a full time fiction writer since completing a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at Victoria University in 2006. Before that she worked as a journalist, editor and speech writer in New Zealand and overseas.

Her acclaimed first book, Etiquette for a Dinner Party: Short Stories, published in 2008, made the long-list of that year’s Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and was listed in the NZ Listener’s Top 100 Books of 2008.


One of her short stories, The Stories of Frank Sargeson, based on her finding a second-hand copy of the book in a Dunedin, was published in 2007 and her second story collection, From Under the Overcoat, will be published by Vintage Random House on February 18.

Orr says she will use the privacy of the apartment to begin writing a novel that she has been framing up for a number of years, an approach that Broatch will also be following, to finish the first draft of a novel that will be dealing with contemporary New Zealand society, blokes, journalism and food.

Broatch says the Fellowship will give him the luxury of time to work on the novel. “The money is a fantastic bonus, but the main issue for me is being able to have time out from my busy life as a working journalist to focus on a project that I have been developing for a number of years.”

As well as having had several short stories published, Broatch is books editor at national Sunday newspaper the Sunday Star-Times, and is moving into a wider arts and entertainment editing role this year. His word-finder book In a Word was short listed in the 2010 PANZ Book Design Awards. He will take up his residency in July.