2021 Writers in Residence

Throughout 2021 the Michael King Writers Centre Trust is looking forward to welcoming and hosting a diverse cohort of writers who, during their time in Devonport’s Signalman’s House, will work on an exciting and eclectic range of topics including: a sequence of poems around the theme of endurance, with special reference to the Antarctic; a middle-grade sustainability fable for our unsettling times; and a domestic dramedy grappling with race, sexuality and family, examining the ways we keep our identities compartmentalised and separate. There is also an original overview of the use of prison labour in New Zealand’s long nineteenth century—from the Church Missionary Society’s use of convicts in 1814 to the state prison farms of the 1920s.

Established writers to receive residencies are: Kerrin P. Sharpe, Jane Bloomfield, Gina Cole, Steph Matuku, Jared Davidson, Kate Duignan, Kyle Mewburn, Octavia Cade, Tracy Farr, Pip Desmond, Helen Vivienne Fletcher, Anna Jackson, Ingrid Horrocks and Miro Bilbrough.

Emerging writers awarded a residency are: Emma Hislop, Lana Lopesi, Nathan Joe, Kiran Dass, Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle and Jordan Hamel.

The Michael King Writers Centre thanks all applicants and wishes all our residency recipients the best of luck with their work.

All of the residencies are available thanks to support from Creative New Zealand.