The Kidman Writers Residency in London is delighted to announce that Saraid de Silva is the inaugural Writer in Residence for 2026.

Saraid de Silva is a writer and arts worker from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her debut novel, Amma, was published in Australia, New Zealand and the UK in 2024. In 2025 Amma was long listed by the New Zealand book awards and the Women’s Prize for fiction. Saraid has recently undertaken the Randell Cottage Writers Residency in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and is currently working on her second novel.

She will be provided with a month’s full accommodation at the Pacific Tavern, which sits between between Canada Water and Surrey Quays. Hosted by Tobias (Toby) Kidman, Pacific Tavern is a modern establishment which has created a focal meeting place in London for New Zealanders and people of the Pacific Rim, living in or visiting the UK. The residency is supported by the Kidman family in New Zealand.

 ‘We look forward to sharing the Tavern with a distinguished New Zealand writer and welcoming her to our restaurant where she will be our guest,’ Kidman says. ‘Her writing desk awaits and we are drawing together a networking group to meet with her for a lunch date’.

‘I am happy that writers can look forward to a warm welcome when they arrive in London,’ Dame Fiona Kidman says. ‘I remember my own introduction, up six flights of stairs to a drafty room where I was utterly miserable. This should be a very different experience and provide opportunity to write in a comfortable environment.’