Four writers are bound for Dunedin in 2009 to live and work in the Robert Lord Writers Cottage in Dunedin, it was announced at a function held at the 100 year old cottage in Titan Street.
The Robert Lord Writers Cottage Trust operates the historic cottage as a continuous full time rent-free home for writers. It was bequeathed by the playwright Robert Lord and 1987 Burns fellow (author of the award winning Joyful and Triumphant). Recent residents have been poet and novelist Vincent O'Sullivan and playwright Branwen Millar. Four writers are bound for Dunedin in 2009 to live and work in the Robert Lord Writers Cottage in Dunedin, it was announced at a function held at the 100 year old cottage in Titan Street.
The Robert Lord Writers Cottage Trust operates the historic cottage as a continuous full time rent-free home for writers. It was bequeathed by the playwright Robert Lord and 1987 Burns fellow (author of the award winning Joyful and Triumphant). Recent residents have been poet and novelist Vincent O'Sullivan and playwright Branwen Millar.Auckland academic Jan White begins her four month residency this week. She is to write a book on Colin McCahon and his circle, while drawing on the collections of the Hocken Library.
She is to be followed by the University of Otago's College of Education Children's Writer in Residence, Joanna Orwin, who will be resident at the College from April to September 2009 while living at the cottage. Orwin is a distinguished writer of children's and young adults' literature as well as non-fiction for adults. She won the 1985 Children's Book of the Year Award for The Guardian of the Land, which has been republished by Harper Collins as a Collins Modern New Zealand classic.
In 2002 her Young Adult novel Owl was the winner in the senior Fiction Category for the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards. Joanna Orwin has described her fictional aims in The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature as "to write about New Zealand experiences in a way that rings true, and to express for our children a sense of belonging to a particular place and time."
Masterton poet, painter and writer Pat White is to research and write a memoir of West Coast writer and environmentalist Peter Hooper during October and November and award winning writer and editor Andrew Mason will complete his book on the New Zealand Literary Fund over December and January. Both writers will live and work at the Cottage while drawing on the Hocken Library Collections.
Chair of the Robert Lord Writers Cottage Trust Nonnita Rees said that the partnerships between the Trust and the University of Otago, particularly through the College of Education and the Hocken Library, had created a wonderful and highly valued resource for the city of Dunedin and for New Zealand's writers and readers. Writers are attracted to what Dunedin offers them in the way of stories, collections as well as the warm welcome from these rich institutions and the community at large.
The Children's Writer in Residence is operated as a partnership between the University of Otago's College of Education and the Robert Lord Writers Cottage Trust and receives funding from Creative New Zealand. The Children's Writer in Residence for 2009 was announced by Trish Brooking of the University of Otago's College of Education.
10/12/08