Paula Morris wins Surrey

By newsroom - Steve Braunias | Posted: Wednesday Oct 16, 2024

Paula Morris has won the distinguished Surrey Hotel Writers Residency Award in association with Newsroom and Jude and Dick Frizzell.

Paula Morris wins Surrey - Newsroom

Jesse Mulligan made the announcement live on his Radio New Zealand Afternoons show this afternoon. I joined him in the studio and passed him the names of all the winners on scraps of paper. Six writers win an opportunity to work on their masterpiece as a guest at the singular Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn, Auckland – it has a weirdly shaped swimming pool, mock-Tudor stylings inside and out, a cat, and a legendary Sunday roast.

Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua, Ngāti Manuhiri) gets more money and a longer residency than the other writers who made it past the shortlist and were judged runners-up. She pockets $3000 and a week’s stay at the Surrey. A past winner of the national fiction prize for her novel Rangatira (2012), who also won the best first book of fiction prize with her debut Queen of Beauty (2003), Morris intends to work on her novel in progress about three Māori living in Britain at the time of the Brexit vote.

The other winners are:

• Emma Hislop (Kāi Tahu), in second place, will pocket $1000 and is awarded five nights at the Surrey, to work on her novel which “explores the differences and complexities between and within Te Ao Māori and Te Ao Pākehā”. It’s a good year for the New Plymouth author: she won the prize for best first book of fiction at the Ockhams in May, for her short story collection Ruin.

• Breton Dukes (Dunedin), Sam Duckor-Jones (Greymouth) and Te Ariki Wi Neera (Paekakariki) all tie for third place. They each receive $500 plus four nights at the Surrey. Acclaimed short story writer Dukes wishes to work on a novel (“Marco works as a cook in a bar. The night gets very busy. Orders pile up. Marco takes tramadol and more tramadol”), acclaimed poet Duckor-Jones wishes to work on a memoir of his famously restored Greymouth church (renamed Gloria, a kind of gay estate); the as yet unacclaimed Wi Neera (Ngāti Toarangatira, Kāi Tahu) is a direct descendant of Te Rauparaha, and wishes to write a historical novel set during his ancestor’s 18-month detention.

• Erika Stretton is in fourth place, which does not qualify her for a cent of the Frizzell loot but does give her three nights at the Surrey, and, as with each winner, a slap-up breakfast each morning. She wishes to work on a wildly promising “rural noir short story collection which examines darkness and light in the suffocating small societies of rural Aotearoa”; her entry included one of the stories, which I have snapped up for publication in ReadingRoom’s short story series, so she does actually receive $200 for her efforts.

My gratitude is to Louisa Yau, manager at the Surrey, for continuing the hotel’s support of the residency award, and to generous patrons Jude and Dick Frizzell.

My thanks also go to all 141 writers who entered the 2024 award, and my sympathies go to the six shortlisted writers who just missed out on a bed at the Surrey. It was very, very close. The judges, an international panel who did the Zoom thing, fought and squabbled and raged, with two of them vowing to never have anything to do with the other as long as they live. Votes went to all six writers who narrowly lost out: rom-com co-authors and sisters Nicky Perry and Kirsty Roby, Otago essayist Jillian Sullivan, Christchurch short story writer Laura Borrowdale, Korean author Dami Jung , and Connie Buchanan of Hamilton (I also snapped up one of her short stories).

The award was established in 2016. Past winners include Shilo Kino, Becky Manawatu, Talia Marshall, John Summers, Ashleigh Young, and Colleen Maria Lenihan. They all ended up publishing a book that owed something to their Surrey residency. Quite a few winners ended up with nothing to show for it, that is they either didn’t finish their project or publishers weren’t interested. Writing! It’s a goddamned near-impossible way of life. You stare at a blank page or a blank screen, and it stares back. It confirms all your worst fears about yourself. It mocks your talent, your stamina, your ambition. It takes you into the wilderness and leaves you there. It implores you to give up. It hisses at you that you were never any good and that the villagers never liked you. But now and then, sometimes, a moment of grace silences all these complaints and allows a nice sentence, an insight, clarity. Such moments await the six writers when they take up residency at the Surrey Hotel.