Writer Sandra Arnold Wins Seresin Landfall Residency 2014

Seresin Estate and Otago University Press are delighted to announce the winner of the 2014 Seresin Landfall Residency.

The sixth recipient of the Seresin Landfall Residency is Greendale, North Canterbury based writer Sandra Arnold, who plans to use the residency to work on her fourth book, a novel titled The Eshwell Bridge Witch Project.

‘The novel explores post-war educational philosophy, social inequality, colour prejudice and government policies that sent poor British children to Canada, Australia and New Zealand to work on farms and eventually populate those countries with white British stock. It also explores the bonds of friendship, love and connections that traverse time and place, from 17^th-century England to present-day New Zealand,’ says Sandra Arnold.

Of her first novel, A Distraction of Opposites, published in 1992, the Daily Telegraph wrote, 'This book…extends and disturbs the frontiers of New Zealand writing.' Tomorrow's Empire followed in 2000. Arnold's fiction has appeared in journals and anthologies in New Zealand and internationally and has been broadcast on National Radio. She completed a MLitt in Creative Writing (High Distinction) with Central Queensland University in 2005 and a PhD in 2010.  In 2011 Canterbury University Press published part of her thesis, Sing no Sad Songs: Losing a Daughter to Cancer. The thesis also included an exegesis on parental bereavement. With poet David Howard, she founded the literary magazine Takahe in 1989 and was its fiction editor until 1996. She is currently on the advisory board of Meniscus, a new online literary journal published by the Australasian Association of Writing Programmes and was a guest editor for its March, 2014 issue.

Arnold had decided to resign from teaching academic writing at CPIT in July this year and travel overseas before returning  to focus full time on her own writing. ‘The residency is an unexpected opportunity, serendipitous in the way it fits in with the plan I already had in place, said Arnold. ‘I am delighted – the timing could not be more perfect.’

Former residency winners:

The inaugural Seresin Landfall Residency recipient was C.K. Stead in 2009, with an additional residency being made available that year to Jenna Shaw. The subsequent recipients have been:  Wystan Curnow, 2010; Serie Barford, 2011; Pat White in 2012; and Maxine Alterio in 2013.

The Seresin Landfall Residency was established with the support of the Seresin Estate. A cottage at Waterfall Bay in the Marlborough Sounds is made available for the successful writer for 4 weeks. Entries for the 2015 residency close on 31 January 2015. Application details are available at: http://www.otago.ac.nz/press/landfall/seresin.html