Michael King

Writing about the Māori World – a key concern of the writer and historian Michael King – will be the focus of a writing workshop to be held next February.

Tā te Ao Māori: Writing the Māori World is the third  writers’ residential workshop run by the Michael King Writers’ Centre. The centre was established in 2005 in memory of King who died in 2004, and aims to support New Zealand writers and to promote all aspects of New Zealand's literature, including fiction and non-fiction. Trustees say the writing workshops complement the residencies provided for working writers at the Writers’ Centre.

Read the official media release (including biographies).

Last year Chris Bourke took home the country’s top literary honour – the New Zealand Post Book of the Year Award – for his work Blue Smoke: the Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964. This year he heads up the judging panel for the same award.

A respected writer, reviewer, music historian and radio producer, Chris is well known as a former long-time producer for Radio New Zealand National’s Saturday Morning programme and as a staff writer and arts and books editor for print publications including The Listener.

Christchurch author and curator Justin Paton has been awarded the 2012 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship. Currently Senior Curator at Christchurch Art Gallery, Justin is best known to New Zealanders as the author of the acclaimed book How to Look at a Painting and as the presenter of the accompanying television series, seen this year on TV1.

Paton, who has been described as ‘New Zealand’s most readable art critic’, has written widely about the visual arts. In Menton, however, he plans to turn his attention to a book about ‘shelter, memory, belonging and place’.

A talented group of writers will take up residencies at the Michael King Writers’ Centre in Devonport next year.

The centre received applications from nearly 70 writers for its residency programme in 2012. Three eight-week residencies were offered, together with one six-month residency run in partnership with The University of Auckland.

A rising star of New Zealand fiction writing whose first novel had a big international impact has been awarded a six-month residency in Auckland in 2012.

Eleanor Catton’s first novel The Rehearsal (pictured right) was released in New Zealand and the United Kingdom in 2008-09, and translation rights have been sold in 12 languages. It won multiple New Zealand and international awards, including the Amazon.ca Best First Book Award (2011). It was on the longlist for the Orange Prize and for the International Dublin Writer’s Award, and on the shortlist for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Award.