Pip Desmond: 2021
Established Writers Residency

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 won Best First Book of Non-Fiction in the 2010 NZ Post Book Awards, and The War That Never Ended: New Zealand Veterans Remember Korea. Pip was the 2019 Massey University visiting writer and has an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University. She has a particular interest in the challenges and ethics of telling true stories, and has run a number of workshops on this topic. She is grateful for the support of the Michael King Writers Centre and will use the residency to work on her latest book about a family faced with their son’s suicide.