From song lyrics to graphic novel
Writers
working on a diverse and innovative range of projects, from song lyrics and
memoir to a graphic novel, have been selected for residences at the Michael
King Writers’ Centre in Devonport next year.
Leading
New Zealand song-writer Don McGlashan has been selected for the eight-week Summer Residency, memoirist and teacher of life-writing
Deborah Shepard will hold the Autumn Residency, while broadcaster and
short-story writer Judith Bryers Holloway has been chosen for the Maori
Writer’s Residency. The six-month University of Auckland Residency has been
awarded to novelist and cartoonist Sarah Laing, to work on a graphic novel
about Katherine Mansfield that is part-biography, part-memoir and part-fiction.
Writers
who are selected for the three eight-week residencies receive free
accommodation at the Michael King Writers’ Centre in Devonport, use of the
writer’s studio and a stipend of $8,000. The University of Auckland Residency
is during the University’s second semester and brings a stipend/salary of
$30,000.
Auckland-based
Don McGlashan is a world-famous musician and performer, who has won numerous
awards for his albums and songs, as well as for his film and television scores.
This year he was made one of The University of Auckland Distinguished Alumni.
Described by the selection panel as a “literary lyricist,” he will use the
opportunity to work on an album of new songs that will explore song structure
and some aspects of New Zealand history.
Deborah Shepard’s
project is a creative non-fiction book Writing
Your Heart Out: The Art and Craft of Memoir, which is a meditation on the
memoir genre. She has written four books, numerous essays and conference
papers, as well as being an editor and consultant biographer
for the Mercy Hospice Auckland. She has taught Life Writing for
Continuing Education at The University of Auckland and the Creative Hub and was life writing author/mentor on the First Chapters new writers
programme in 2010.
Judith
Bryers Holloway (Ngapuhi, Ngati Manu and Te Mahurehure) is working on a
collection of thematically-linked short stories for children. Now living in
Levin, she has been a teacher, a scriptwriter/editor/producer of educational
programmes for schools, a television scriptwriter and has written nine books,
including a Maori dictionary and a Maori vocabulary book.
Sarah
Laing, from Auckland, plans to write a graphic novel about Katherine Mansfield’s
life, interspersed with a personal account of her own fascination with
Mansfield. A multi-genre project, it will call on her skills as a novelist,
cartoonist and graphic designer. Laing’s third book, her second novel, The Fall of Light will be published by
Vintage in 2013 and she has a large number of short stories, poetry, comics and
festival appearances to her name. She held a short residency at the Michael
King Writers’ Centre in 2008 and has won several other prestigious writing and
design awards.
The
convenor of the selection panel, Michael King Writers’ Centre Trustee Peter
Simpson, said the panel was embarrassed with choice. Sixty-eight writers
applied for one or more of the four opportunities available in 2013, with a
total of 131 applications altogether.
“There
was a tremendous response and the number and quality of the applications made
the selection process very challenging. There was a very strong field of
candidates and we regretted that many excellent projects could not be
supported. The writers who have been selected all have a track record of
high-quality work.”
The
2013 residency programme is offered with the support of Creative New Zealand
and the centre plans to offer a similar programme in 2014. Twenty-two New
Zealand writers have held residencies at the centre since it was set up in
2005. The current writer in residence is novelist Eleanor Catton.
The
centre is also able to assist writers who do not qualify for its supported
residency programme. It has a second bedroom which is let at a modest rate to
visiting writers who need a quiet place to work.
1 comment:
Congratulations to all the receipients of these residencies, especially Sarah Laing. With all her talents, she could have applied many times over!
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