News from the Michael King Writers' Centre

Newsletter August 2013

Talk about busy! It’s been an action-packed year and time is just racing, with wonderful writers in the house, exciting events and great developments. Judith Bryers Holloway, who held the Maori Writer’s Residency, was a lovely presence in the centre between May and July.  More recently, Sarah Laing has started her six-month University of Auckland/Creative New Zealand Residency. In May and June we hosted Huo Yan from Beijing, in our very first supported international residency, the Rewi Alley Fellowship. And we are over the moon that Eleanor Catton, who held The University of Auckland residency here last year, has made the longlist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize for her second novel The Luminaries, just published in New Zealand by Victoria University Press and internationally by Granta. Ellie wrote the final draft of The Luminaries while she held her residency here. It is a fantastic achievement to have made the longlist. Congratulations Ellie on this well-deserved achievement.  It will be a nervous wait until the shortlist is announced on September 10 (UK). We are also delighted that former resident writer and Poet Laureate Ian Wedde has been awarded the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writer’s Residency and will head there in late October. A recent highlight was the Matariki film screening of Paora Joseph’s beautiful film Tataraki: The Children of Parihaka at the Victoria Theatre, attended by about 95 people. Meantime, we are busy with the residential workshop on Writing the Arts: The Explanatory Word, to be held at Vaughan Park in Long Bay over Labour weekend. We have also been busy with workshops and master classes, through the Young Writers’ Programme and The Poetry Project - and another couple of exciting events that we are planning before the end of the year, which are still under wraps. As if all of that is not enough, we are now calling for applications for the 2014 residency programme. Applications close on Friday October 4 this year. Details can be found on our web site. Warm regards Karren Beanland, Manager

Sarah Laing arrives ...

Novelist Sarah Laing was pictured throughout the media in the lead-up to her residency at the centre, with the well-timed launch of her third book The Fall of Light (Random House) . This is the second time she has held a residency at the centre and we are delighted to have her back. In 2008 she held a short residency (six weeks), during which she worked on her first novel Dead People’s Music (Random House 2009). This year she holds the six-month University residency, so she will work some of the time at the centre and some of the time at the University of Auckland. While she holds the residency, Sarah is working on an intriguing project:  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. Sarah has been involved in one of our Young Writers’ Programme workshops and designed last year’s Signals literary journal.

... as Judith Bryers Holloway leaves

Judith Bryers Holloway made the most of her time at the Michael King Writers’ Centre and made lots of connections in Devonport and Auckland, so we hope she may return some day. She held the Maori Writer’s Residency, supported by Te Waka Toi, to work on a book of children’s short stories. She spent a great deal of time researching Matariki and working on a story around some of the ideas behind Matariki. She took part in a powhiri arranged by the Devonport Library Associates and gave a fascinating talk, with beautiful images, about her whakapapa and her Ngapuhi forebears. In July she read at a children’s Matariki event at the Takapuna Library.

Our first Rewi Alley Fellow, Huo Yan

One of the first things we heard about Huo Yan before she arrived in Auckland, was that she did not know how to cook and wasn’t keen on cleaning. We wondered how the talented 25-year-old writer might cope at the centre – so different from life in a Beijing apartment. We didn’t need to worry. By the time she left here, she had a few cooking lessons (with many photos of the resulting meals sent home), had gone sky-diving and skiing in Queenstown and visited Rotorua and Tauranga, where she met an interesting group of Chinese writers. While she was here she wrote 50,000 words: one story about a murder caused by miscommunication; another about the experience of immigrant Chinese people living in New Zealand. Yan expects they will be published in the China Literature Magazine in 2014. This year’s fellowship came about from an idea developed by George Andrews from the NZ China Friendship Society and Geoff Chapple from the Michael King Writers’ Centre. The NZ China Friendship Society obtained funding from  the Rewi Alley Friendship Exchange Fund.  It is hoped that the fellowship will be lead to the first regular and significant literary exchange between New Zealand and China, with a New Zealand writer going to China in alternate years. Discussions are now under way for the next stage of the project. As always, it depends on funding. More