Announcing the shortlist of the grooviest writers residency award in NZ

By newsroom - Steve Braunias | Posted: Friday Oct 11, 2024

Congratulations to everyone shortlisted for the Surrey Hotel Writers Residency Award, especially Otago's Breton Dukes and Jillian Sullivan

Pinkest gay in the village shortlisted for Surrey - Newsroom

A dozen writers – some of them leading figures in New Zealand literature, some of them complete nobodies – have been shortlisted for the fairly glamorous, definitely long-winded and awesomely enumerated Surrey Hotel Writers Residency Award in Association with Newsroom and Dick and Jude Frizzell.

The elite doz were selected from a grand total of 141 entries. About 20 writers only just missed out on the shortlist – the quality was high, very high, causing judges terrible stresses and strains, which are only going to get worse as they narrow the field down to the grand winner, plus second place, third place, and two runners-up. These winners all gain free accommodation at the marvellous mock-Tudor stylings of the Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn, Auckland, and a share of $5000 loot as put up by Jude Frizzell and her husband, painter and author Dick Frizzell.

As per tradition since the award was conceived in 2016, the winners will be announced live on the wireless when I appear alongside Jesse Mulligan on his celebrated Afternoons show on Radio New Zealand, next Wednesday, October 16, at 1:35pm.

The shortlisted 12 are:

Josie Shapiro won the inaugural Allen & Unwin fiction prize in 2022 for the novel that was later published and became a bestseller, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts (also translated in France). She wishes to work on her second novel, The Art of Falling: “There’s a lot of skateboarding and a bit of sex, a lot of drinking and a bit of surfing.”

Breton Dukes. The Dunedin author of two acclaimed collections of short stories published by Victoria University Press, who works as a cook in a bar, wishes to work on a novel titled The Idea of Love: “The project begins with Marco working as a cook in a bar. The night gets very busy. Orders pile up. Marco takes tramadol and more tramadol. His family shows up at the bar. Men from his old school come into the kitchen, there are questions they want to ask him….”

Nicky Perry and Kirsty Roby. Sisters! And co-writers of rom-com novels. “In June, we took a trip to Stewart Island to research for our 7th novel,” they emailed. “Lawrence Lloyd, famous NZ artist, and owner of the Hatwell hotel on NZ’s smallest island, has died. He’s left the hotel to anyone who bothers to turn up to his funeral. Liv is desperate to escape from the media circus surrounding her, ever since she turned down the proposal of NZ’s favourite All Black. Ambrose wants to leave his job and run the hotel on the island where he spent idyllic summer holidays. They don’t like each other much. But they each own half the hotel…”

Jillian Sullivan lives in the Ida Valley in Central Otago and taught at Penn University last year. She wishes to work on her second collection of essays, An Activist in a Small Town. “I write from a unique perspective of life in New Zealand with the chance to record, reflect and interrogate what it means to live in a geographically contained valley in a community of less than 150 people.”

Emma Hislop. The New Plymouth author of an acclaimed collection of short stories published by Te Herenga Waka University Press wishes to work on a novel, titled Cure: “It takes place over seven days. I continue to be interested in power, and this novel uses the art gallery as a site for exploring the differences and complexities between and within Te Ao Māori and Te Ao Pākehā, in a work context … Individual histories and the impacts of colonisation are examined.”

Laura Borrowdale. The Christchurch author of Sex, With Animals wishes to work on a collection of “haunting, challenging and subversive stories that reimagine dystopian narratives, childhood and everyday monsters”, as well as a novel: “Sylvie can measure the time she has left by the blister packs of life-saving medication she carries with her.”