Press Release
A coming of age
music memoir about the 1970s and the outlaw heroes of the Wellington and New
Zealand rock scene has been awarded the 2015 Adam Foundation Prize in Creative
Writing at Victoria University of Wellington.
Nick Bollinger, well-known Radio New
Zealand broadcaster and journalist, says the decision to enrol in the MA
programme at Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of
Modern letters (IIML) to work on Goneville, his MA thesis, represented a
significant change in direction for his writing.
“I knew that for the story I wanted to tell, I would
need to combine musicology and social history with something more personal. I
hoped the course would help me find a way to weave these strands together.”
He describes receiving the Adam Foundation Prize as a great honour
and a fantastic surprise.
“My year in the IIML’s MA programme has been incredibly
inspiring. It has been a privilege to develop my work under the guidance of
skilled teachers and with the companionship of an extraordinary group of fellow
students. I have benefitted immeasurably from the experience and I know I will
continue to draw from it in the years to come.”
The book-length
folio is described by Auckland-based journalist and editor Tom McWilliams as
“complex but compulsively readable, insightful and funny”.
Supported by
Wellingtonians Denis and Verna Adam through the Victoria University Foundation,
the $3,000 Adam Foundation Prize is awarded annually to an outstanding student
in the Master of Arts in Creative Writing programme at the IIML.
In its quest to
revisit and understand the early years of New Zealand rock music, Goneville traces
the author’s life between 1971—when Nick was 13—and the 1981 Springbok
tour—when he’d been a working musician for three years.
Weaving together a
memoir of illuminating discoveries—but also great personal loss—the narrative
draws on vignettes of life on the road and studies of seminal bands and
recently recovered recordings. It’s a story that examines the cultural chasm
opening up in the 1970s and the changes it brought about, changes that continue
to shape our lives today.
Cliff Fell, a
previous recipient of the Adam Prize and a co-convenor of this year’s Master’s
programme, says he was completely drawn in to Nick Bollinger’s narrative voice,
its intelligence, warmth and humour.
“Nick has done an
unusual thing, producing a folio that is both literary in scope and popular in
tone. His writing is thoughtful, amusing and lucid and his folio studded with
vivid scenes and colourful characters.
“Goneville
will make a book that will find a wide readership among anyone interested in
music and social change, among those who were part of the scene and those who
weren’t—who were perhaps in other parts of the world, as I was, or too young or
not even born.”
Journalist and
long-time editor Tom McWilliams, an examiner for Nick’s thesis, describes him
as a natural storyteller. “I was delighted by Nick’s sure-footed, clean prose,
his aims, passion and writing chops.”
Tom is looking
forward to seeing Goneville in print. “The book is peopled with outlaw
heroes, whose defiant lives and run-ins with the law are story-teller’s gold,
and is structured on short, invitingly titled chapters any of which suggest a
lively reading at a festival or on the radio.”
Previous Adam
Foundation Prize recipients include acclaimed authors Eleanor Catton, Catherine
Chidgey, Paula Morris and Ashleigh Young.
No comments:
Post a Comment