Hub tutor news ...

Hub tutor news ... Roger Hall has received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature – the first New Zealand playwright to do so. He joins three other Creative Hub tutors - Owen Marshall, Elizabeth Smither and Fiona Kidman in this special club, which recognises the highest level of excellence in literature … Roger is planning to do up his study with the prize money, which he describes as the smallest room in his house. Roger’s CV includes more than 40 plays and four decades worth of television writing, including the pioneering television series Buck House and Pukemanu and more recently, Spin Doctors. Roger has been teaching a dialogue writing workshop at the Creative Hub for five years. Tessa Duder has recently launched her latest book, "Sarah Mathew: Explorer, Journalist and Auckland ‘First Lady’" (David Ling Publishing). Sarah’s journals, scrapbooks and letters describe the city’s unique 1840 founding ceremony and earliest days – yet Sarah’s story and her contribution to Auckland’s settlement has been little recognised. Tessa says: "I believe my biography should bring Sarah … out of the shadows. The surviving papers of both Sarah and her husband Felton Mathew, Hobson’s first Surveyor-General, revealed a young woman of extraordinary toughness, loyalty and literary ability, and a husband whose contribution to Auckland has been unfairly disparaged by historians. Together, in a small gaff-rigged cutter … the couple undertook an epic two-month winter exploration of the harbours between the Bay of Islands and the Firth of Thames. Once as wife and two as a widow, Sarah would eventually round Cape Horn three times. Her story is one of commitment, adventure, endurance and disappointment – but also embraces an inveterate traveller’s sense of wonder, and a devoted wife’s enduring love." Owen Marshall says: "My wife and I are in Wellington, as I'm the present writer in residence at Randell Cottage. Most of my time will be spent reading other people's work rather than doing my own, as I am one of the three person judging panel for fiction in the 2016 Ockham NZ Book Awards." Property company Ockham have recently taken over sponsorship of the NZ Book Awards which are an annual award for the best books published that year.