15 December 2022

L- R: Damien Wilkins, Verna Adam, and Olive Nuttall.

An hilarious but emotionally powerful novel is the winner of the 2022 Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing from Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML).

Olive Nuttall wrote the winning manuscript, Kitten, as part of her 2022 Master of Arts (MA) at the IIML.

Kitten tells the story of Rosemary, a young trans woman whose romantic life cuts across family ritual when she is forced to return to her hometown to be at the bedside of her ailing grandmother. The resulting pandemonium is hilarious, heart-breaking, and ultimately uplifting.

Olive says, “I feel absurdly fortunate to be awarded this prize. I want to thank the Moon, the Fates, Sleep and Death, the queers, Always, Will, Kōtuku, and Pluto. I am an absolute slut for affirmation, and I literally could not have completed this manuscript with one kind word less, so thank you to all the sweeties. I want to take this moment to acknowledge the death and remember the life of a beautiful girl and talented writer, Jesse Dekel—she would have hated this, I think.”

Olive has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, with a minor in Japanese. She took the IIML undergraduate course in short fiction in 2016, after moving to Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington in 2014 for the specific purpose of attending the IIML.

Supported by Wellingtonians Verna Adam and the late Denis Adam through the Victoria University of Wellington Foundation, the $5,000 Adam Prize is awarded annually to an outstanding student in the MA in Creative Writing programme.

Course convenor William Brandt says it has been a pleasure to work with Olive over the last year, and a delight to watch this outstanding novel emerge.

“Olive was a joy to work with. She quickly identified her subject and brought everything she had to the task. She was inspired by such writers as Audrey Lorde, Imogen Binnie, and Casey Plett, but the voice is all her own―the voice of a smart, flawed, self-aware young woman who is full of surprises―for the reader, and for herself.

“Kitten is a novel which is contemporary in the best sense of the word―it’s talking about salient features of the social landscape right now. It’s funny, very funny, but it’s also deep. It’s about pain, family, and love, and will appeal to a wide readership.”

Publisher and Adam Foundation Prize examiner Fergus Barrowman says, “Kitten, for all its darkness and hurt, is a wholesome and consoling love story… It is a book for readers who want to be seen and understood, or to see and understand.”

Acclaimed author and 2017 Adam Prize winner Annaleese Jochems says: “Rosemary is an incredibly charming, relatable character with an intensely fascinating view of the world. I didn’t want to read anything else while I was reading this book.”

An extract from Kitten appears in the 2022 edition of the IIML’s online journal Turbine | Kapohau.

Previous Adam Foundation Prize recipients include authors Eleanor Catton, Catherine Chidgey, Ashleigh Young, Hera Lindsay Bird, and Rebecca Reilly.