We have welcomed Majella as the recipient of the 2021 NZSA Auckland Museum Research Grant which includes four weeks of residency time at MKWC.
Majella writes poetry, fiction and essays. Her 2018 debut novel The Life of De’Ath was shortlisted for the NZSA Heritage Book Awards and long-listed for the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for Fiction. She has published two poetry collections Guarding the Flame, Salmon Poetry, Ireland 2011 and Whisper of a Crow’s Wing, Salmon Poetry and Otago University Press, 2018. The latter was chosen as The NZ Listener’s Top Ten Poetry Books of 2018. Majella was the 2014 Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago, and has also held residencies at the Pah Homestead, Auckland, the Caselberg House, Dunedin, and was joint Dan Davin Writer in Residence at Yule House in Invercargill. In 2020 she was awarded a Copyright Licensing New Zealand Grant for a non-fiction project. She has a PhD in Creative Practice from the University of Otago and lives in Port Chalmers with her partner Andrew and their son, Robbie.