The next big winners in New Zealand literature are about to be announced
Jesse Mulligan will announce the winners of the 2023 Surrey Hotel Writers Residency Award live on his Afternoon show at about 1.35pm on Radio New Zealand.
The award, held in association with Newsroom and Dick Frizzell, will provide seven nights' free accommodation at the Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn, Auckland, and a share of $5000. The money is from Frizzell's own pocket. As patron, and as an author himself, he appreciates the need for writers to find a space to burrow their heads and work on a masterpiece. The winner will burrow for seven nights at the Surrey, and receive $3000. Second place will burrow for five nights, and receive $1000. Two writers will share third place, and are invited to burrow for four nights; each receives $500. There may also be two runners-up who don't get a red cent but do get three nights at the Surrey.
The award is in its seventh year. Previous winners include Becky Manawatu, Ashleigh Young, John Summers, Jared Wiremu Kane, Talia Marshall, and Colleen Maria Lenihan. Over 120 entries were received this year and a longlist of 12 writers was announced last week; six from that elite will hear their names read out this afternoon by the golden throat of Jesse Mulligan.
The longlist comprises four men and eight women. They wish to win the award to work on such projects as historical novels, short stories, memoirs and essays.
Stef Harris is a frontline cop stationed in Motueka, and the author of a crime novel, Double Jeopardy. He is writing a love story.
Rachel Lees of Tauranga is writing a memoir of working as secretary to the cult leader who features in the Amazon Prime documentary Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets.
Miro Bilbrough, a New Zealand writer living in Sydney, is the author of In The Time of the Manaroans, named in ReadingRoom as the best book of nonfiction in New Zealand in 2020. She is close to finishing a novel which she describes as "the story of impossible love between a young man who wishes to be older, and an older woman who wishes to be younger".
Tracy Wheeler of Auckland has nominated her 20-year-old son Lex Lawler, a Dungeon Master and tutor, who has written 16 chapters of dystopian masterpiece called AUDREY 366.
Craig Cliff of Dunedin, the author of two novels, is writing a crime thriller. The victim works at the Department of Internal Affairs at the time of the 2022 anti-mandate protests on the lawn of Parliament.
James Pasley of Auckland is one of the very best short story writers I have ever published at ReadingRoom. He is working on a collection that includes a story titled "John Campbell".
Emma Ling Sidnam of Wellington won the 2022 Michael Gifkins Prize for her manuscript Backwaters; Text will publish her debut novel next month. She wants to work on a short collection: "Sex with strangers, humans becoming animals, friends eating friends, racial fetishisation, and sexuality crises."
Isabelle McNeur of Wellington is working on a short story collection: "Sex robots run away together. Cakes are poisoned. Dancers glow in the dark."
JJ Harper of Auckland is an enfant terrible whose nonfiction provocations I like very much. He is working on a collection of essays about the unbearable folks of Gen Z.
Nat Baker of Auckland has written 147,500 words of a novel called Revenge, about a Kiwi woman who returns to New Zealand from Britain in the early days of Covid.
Cadence Chung of Wellington is a poet, composer, and classical singer. She is working on a collection of short fiction "partly inspired by my experiences as a young artist in Aotearoa’s current society".
Saige England of New Brighton is writing a historical novel which she says is "about the dark heart of colonisation in New Zealand".
Four of these talents will soon lay their head at the Surrey Hotel, pocket Dick Frizzell's loot, and work on a masterpiece that will potentially stun, electrify and in general basic terms please the world greatly. I will join Jesse in the RNZ studio in Hobson St, downtown Auckland at 1.35pm and hand him the names of the winners on scraps of paper. A story will magically appear on the ReadingRoom site seconds later. What a day in New Zealand literature!
