Fleur was awarded the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal in 2012, and an ONZM for services to literature in 2015, and is the current patron of the Dorothy Neale White Children’s Book Collection at the National Library of New Zealand.
She is a manuscript assessor and a member of the Association of Manuscript Assessors NZ, she has given many workshops on writing to young people and adults, judged many writing competitions and has worked as a mentor. For several years she taught creative writing at night classes and took a workshop on assessment for students at the excellent Whitireia publishing course until cuts kicked in, and the admin stopped employing guest lecturers.
It matters deeply to Fleur that NZ young people have books that resonate with their lives and experiences which is why she started writing books set in our country and with text reflecting the way we speak.
On receiving the President of Honour title, Fleur Beale said “I am quite overwhelmed by the honour. The Society of Authors has been such an important part of my life, it’s so reassuring for a writer working away in what feels like the dark to know the Society has our backs and is there to throw light on tricky matters and support us.
I feel that my appointment is an opportunity to spotlight the importance of writing for children who are, of course, the future readers of books for adults. We need to have a solid cohort of keen readers growing up to advocate for and support NZ writing and publishing.”
NZSA President Dr Vanda Symon says “ “We are delighted to have Fleur Beale as our 2026 NZSA President of Honour. We admire her dedication to childrens’ literature and the importance of telling New Zealand stories as the building blocks of literacy and creating life-long readers.”
The NZSA President of Honour delivers the prestigious annual NZSA Janet Frame Memorial Lecture – an event that comments on the literary sector.
Rollcall of NZSA Presidents of Honour
Past Presidents of Honour
NZSA President of Honour 2025 – Charlotte Grimshaw
Charlotte was awarded the 2024 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship. She is a winner of the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship and the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award. Her story collection Opportunity was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Prize, and Opportunity won New Zealand’s premier Montana Award for Fiction, along with the Montana Medal for Book of the Year. She was the Montana Book Reviewer of the Year. Her story collection Singularity was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her novel, The Night Book, was a finalist for the New Zealand Post Book Award. Her most recent novel, Mazarine, was longlisted for the 2019 Ockham Book Awards. Her bestselling 2021 memoir, The Mirror Book, was shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Non-Fiction.
Charlotte Grimshawis currently a regular reviewer and columnist for the NZ Listener. Her monthly column in Metro magazine won a Qantas Media Award. She won the 2018, 2019 and 2021 Voyager Media Award for Reviewer of the Year. Two of her novels, The Night Book and Soon, have been made into a TV series, The Bad Seed, screened on TV One in 2019. A compilation of The Night Book and Soon, titled The Bad Seed, was published in 2019.
Charlotte Grimshaw is a literary advisor to the Sargeson Trust and to the Academy of New Zealand Literature. She has judged the Sunday Star-Times Short Story award twice, and the Auckland University Ingenio short story award twice, and has judged the premier award of the BNZ Katherine Mansfield short story prize.
Commenting in the Guardian on Singularity and Opportunity Jane Campion said, “She is a master of mystery, very contemporary and astute. Her language is relaxed, spare and perfect.” The Times Literary Supplement noted, “Grimshaw’s vivid descriptions… are a joy.” Charlotte’s The Night Book was praised for “tread[ing] perfectly the divide between fact and fiction” (Sunday Star Times). In the same paper, Kerre Woodham wrote of it: “This is a beautifully written novel — suspenseful, topical and a wonderful study of human relationships… The characters are fabulous and the writing’s superb.”
“Opening the pages of Charlotte Grimshaw’s new novel Soon is akin to tilting the blinds in a dim room; the razor-like precision of her words flood your mind with crisp, searing light, such is the vivid clarity of her prose… Soon is clever and uncomfortable at the same time. Charlotte Grimshaw has a peculiar and very satisfying knack of infusing a sort of heat and energy into her pages and cultivating a low-lying sense of tension into every line. Plus she’s a connoisseur of human behaviour.” – TVNZ
“Charlotte Grimshaw is one of New Zealand’s most accomplished and acclaimed writers with a significant publishing record. She has few peers as a fiction writer and essayist, and as a reviewer and public intellectual. Her work for newspapers and magazines reveals her curiosity about the world, her immersion in contemporary politics and social issues; it demonstrates her clear-sighted thinking, willingness to interrogate and expose, and desire to engage with difficult topics. Her writing can be searing and fearless. Her work as a fiction writer wins literary awards and is adapted for television, a rare combination anywhere, especially for an author who is not writing commercial or historical fiction.” – Dr Paula Morris MNZM
