Our tenth writer-in-residence for the year, Gillian is an award-winning children’s author. Her books include the popular “Explore and Discover” series about nature habitats. Her most recent book is New Zealand Nature Heroes: inspiration and activities for young conservationists.  Gillian has a backg

Our ninth resident for the year, Sinead (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Porou) is a kairangahau and writer who lives in Wellington. Her work has been published with Starling, Sport, Turbine Kapohau, The Pantograph Punch, RNZ and in the recent anthology Out Here: An Anthology of Takatapui

Tara is a Te Whanganui-a-Tara based cartoonist and art school drop-out. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from Massey University and can often be found in the front row of book events, illustrating authors and their ideas. You can find her work in many places, including The Sapling, Stasis Journ

Our seventh resident for the year, Michele has been a writer, producer and dancer across the globe. Her fiction and non-fiction has been published widely across many mediums and broadcast for radio both in New Zealand and the UK.She was New Zealand’s 2010 Robert Burns Fellow, and as a screenwriter

Matthew is a writer, scholar, and teacher based in Wellington. He returned home in 2021 after several years teaching university English in Iowa. Much of his scholarship has focused on the mimetic theory of René Girard, and he is currently working on a literary and cultural study of the rivalries bet

We have welcomed our fifth writer-in-residence for the 2022 Programme…Ashleigh is the author of How I Get Ready (VUP, 2019), Can You Tolerate This? (VUP, 2016), and Magnificent Moon (VUP, 2012). Her poetry and essays have been widely published in New Zealand and overseas. She won a Windham-Campbel

Scott’s (Ngāti Kahu), first home was on an air-force base in Blenheim, New Zealand. His love of books came from the birthday gift his father continues to give him every year.Scott works in advertising. He writes novels, short stories and blogs about original ideas he wants to share. He is our four

Faith (Sāmoa|Germany, Clan Gunn|England), is a writer and editor who grew up in the Waikato but now lives in Tāmaki Makaurau. She is the founder of Saufo`i Press that publishes poetry books by Pacific poets in Aotearoa.  She graduated with a Master of Creative Writing from the International Institut

Our second writer-in-residence for the year, Shilo (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Maniapoto) is an award-winning writer and journalist. The Pōrangi Boy is her first book and the winner of the Young Adult Fiction category at the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in 2021. She was a TV journalist for Marae

Happy New Year! We are very happy to have welcomed Claire as our first writer-in-residence for 2022.Claire is a fiction writer and legal researcher based in Rotorua. Her fiction has been published in Sport, Landfall, Kapohau/Turbine and Takahē, and read on Radio New Zealand’s National Programme. 

Miro is a filmmaker, filmmaking teacher and a poet whose memoir of a counterculture New Zealand adolescence, In the Time of the Manaroans (Victoria Univeristy Press, 2020) has received critical rave reviews. As a writer-director she has made the feature films Being Venice (2012)—which enjoyed a bout

Jordan Hamel is a Pōneke-based writer, poet and performer. He grew up in Timaru on a healthy diet of Catholicism and toxic masculinity.He was the 2018 New Zealand Poetry Slam champion and represented Aotearoa at the World Poetry Slam Champs in the USA. He is the co-editor of everyone’s favourite l

Zarah is a writer from Auckland. She is the author of Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life (Giramondo Publishing, 2021) and Autobiography of a Marguerite (Hue & Cry Press, 2014). Links to her work can be found online at zarahbm.comDuring her residency Zarah is going to be working on a series of prose poem

Helen is a widely published children’s and young adult author, spoken word poet and award-winning playwright. She has written an impressive collection of work for everyone from preschoolers to adult readers. Spanning a variety of subjects, Helen’s writing doesn’t shy away from the gritty parts of li

Pip is a Wellington writer, editor and oral historian who specialises in creative non-fiction. Her memoir Song for Rosaleen, about caring for her mother when she got dementia, was long-listed for the 2019 Ockham NZ Book Awards. Pip’s other books include Trust: A True Story of Women and Gangs, which

The first writer to have the timing of her residency affected by the pandemic; Kiran reviews books regularly on RNZ and her writing has appeared in NZ Herald, NZ Listener, RNZ, The Spinoff, Pantograph Punch, Sunday magazine, Sunday Star-Times, Landfall and The Wire (UK). She has chaired sessions at

Tracy is a Wellington writer who used to be a scientist. Her debut novel, The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt, was long- and shortlisted for three prestigious literary awards in Australia, and her second novel, The Hope Fault, was one of NZ Listener’s 100 Best Books of 2017. Both novels were published

We have welcomed our 13th writer-in-residence. Octavia  is a Cambridge based writer with a PhD in science communication. She likes using speculative fiction to talk about science in new and interesting ways – her sample writing for the Michael King residency was a short story about rebuilding scient

Kyle is one of New Zealand’s most eclectic and prolific writers. From multi-layered picture books (Old-Hu-hu; Hill & Hole) to laugh-out-loud junior fiction series (Dinosaur Rescue; Dragon Knight), her titles have been translated into eighteen languages and won numerous awards including Children’s Bo

Kate graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from VUW in 2000.  Her MA project was her first novel, Breakwater.  Kate has also published short fiction, poetry and reviews for a variety of journals and publications including as Takahē, Landfall, Sport, The Penguin Book of the Contemporary New Zealan