NOVEL TRAVEL AWARD FOR WRITERS

By Adrian Blackburn

An imaginative travel award sparked by the generosity of one of our leading writers is again open for applications.

A major donation by our own Sir James McNeish, a recent NZSA President of Honour, and Lady Helen McNeish,(left), in association with the Churchill Trust, created the Winston Churchill/McNeish Writers' Fellowship.

The first biennial fellowship, in 2014, went to Johnny Blades, of Radio New Zealand International, who is now working on a book after travels in Papua New Guinea enabled by the award.

Now, in the 50th anniversary year of Winston Churchill's death, applications for the 2016 fellowship are to close this July 31.

Sir James has explained that preference will be given to applicants who travel to an under-developed or Third World region or whose culture isn't fundamentally Anglo-Saxon.

"It's open to writers aged roughly 25 to 40, with a track record of publications, with priority to writers who wish to travel to and immerse themselves in a society that's different."

The philosophy behind it stems from James McNeish's own experiences as a young adult. It is designed "to reward those who recognise the need to get away from a small enclosed society like ours and have their horizons altered, so that, returning, they can begin to look at their homeland through fresh eyes".

The first recipient, Johnny Blades, of Radio New Zealand International, is extremely positive about the fellowship.

"It came along at quite the right time for me. I had been looking for a way to go deeper into my area of focus - Melanesia.

"The fellowship freed me of some of the limitations that come with my day job reporting on the region and enabled me to travel back to Papua New Guinea, with more time at my disposal, and observe more closely the way grassroots communities function. This formed important background research for a book I am working on about on political and social upheavals in Melanesia.

"The transformation that I observed taking place in PNG in 2014 is very much at the heart of the book's theme.

"I would recommend the Fellowship to any writer/journalist in the early stages of their career who is looking for travel to a remote or developing part of the world for an experience that will form part of some sort of writing project."

A small committee of writers helped draft the criteria and set up the fellowship. One member, Kate de Goldi, said: "It's a unique and imaginative award. It provides a timely spur to young writers and journalists hungry to make a real difference."

Another member, Tony Simpson, added: "It seems to me essential that New Zealand writers have this early experience of landing in a society and culture in which none of their suppositions are taken for granted. It opens out the whole world."

Meantime, Rachael Selby, the chair of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Board, says the McNeish award joint venture is already setting the pattern for a number of other joint venture awards between the trust and donors.

Each year the trust receives between 60 and 80 applications for general fellowships, with about 15 being successful. "All we need for the McNeish fellowship is one really good applicant."

But, she says, there's a chance of other worthy applicants being considered for one of the trust's general awards.

The McNeish fellowship is worth between $5000 and $7000 and is for travel of up to six months.

Applications should go to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Board.