The University of Otago has announced a series of award-winning writers and artists as its Burns Fellows for 2020.

The five prestigious fellowships are announced every year, and fellows receive a stipend for between six months and one year, and space on campus to pursue their projects .

Next year’s Robert Burns Fellow will be Dr John Newton, a poet and literary historian who is working on the second instalment of a three-volume history of 20th-century New Zealand writing.

The second instalment, Where Exactly Are We? spans the period 1946 to 1968.

Children’s author and poet Elena de Roo will take the University of Otago College of Education Creative New Zealand Children’s Writer in Residence Fellowship, and is planning a project inspired by the paintings of New Zealand painter Bill Hammond.