FROM READINGROOM

New Zealand’s coolest writers residency award is back, via Newsroom, Dick Frizzell, and a Grey Lynn hotel

Established authors, promising writers, and desperadoes burning, burning, burning like fabulous yellow roman candles or whatever are invited to enter the 2023 Surrey Hotel Writers Residency Award in association with Newsroom and Dick Frizzell. There is $5000 to be won in cold hard cash plus the honour and prestige of being awarded the coolest writers residency prize in New Zealand – winners get to stay in an actual hotel, with room service, with breakfast, with really interesting carpet in the hallways.

Applications open today, as of now, this very second, for the 2023 prize. Entries close soon, very soon; and a winner will be announced in about four weeks time, live on Jesse Mullligan’s afternoon show on Radio New Zealand, as per tradition. The award is now in its seventh year. Previous winners and finalists include Talia Marshall, Becky Manawatu, Naomi Arnold, Anna Rankin, and Laurence Fearnley. Some men have won it, too.

Dick Frizzell, a writer who paints for a living, has shown amazing generosity by putting forward $5,000 towards the residency. His loot will be shared between three or maybe four winners. The first-place winner will receive a week’s free accommodation at the singular Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn, Auckland, with cooked breakfast thrown in plus the Surrey’s famous Sunday roast. Vegetarians can elect for more peas I suppose. There are two runners-up. Second place will receive five nights accommodation a the Surrey; third place will receive four nights accommodation.

The Surrey Hotel is widely considered the grooviest writers residency in New Zealand arts and letters. It’s got ye olde Tudor stylings and the swimming pool has to be seen to be believed. The residency allows winners the comfort, glamour and fun of staying at the distinctly odd and certainly very striking Surrey to work on their masterpiece.