READINGROOM

Announcing the Surrey Hotel writers residency award shortlist

The most celebrated and well-known New Zealand novelist of modern times has been shortlisted for the 2022 Surrey Hotel writers residency award in association with Newsroom.

Becky Manawatu, author of Auē, the book that won everything and everyone read, is among the finalists selected by an assessment committee from an insanely high standard of applicants.

How insane? There are usually 10 writers on the shortlist but the committee, which I advised, had neither the heart nor the will to narrow it down to that number. They have selected 16 writers. Even so, it was an agony to pass on numerous published authors who were among the field of 131 writers chasing this year’s award, and an equal distress to pass on complete nobodies who sent in fascinating ideas for their various novels, memoirs, short stories, and essays.

Anyway so the elite squad of 16 writers shortlisted for the 2022 award are:

• Becky Manawatu, who wants to work on her second novel Kataraina, “about a Māori woman, a character from Auē who suffered greatly, and had little to no voice in those pages. While this was intentional, it has not sat right with me, and my new manuscript has a sharp focus on giving Kataraina, or Aunty Kat her power and voice back.”
• Kirsten McDougall, author of She’s A Killer, who wants to work on short stories
• Aleisha Ward, who wants to work on her book about “the long jazz age in New Zealand (1917-1935), how jazz was imported, what New Zealanders thought about jazz, and how it was adapted to New Zealand tastes.”
• J Wiremu Kane, who wants to work on his novel Whakarongorua, “a sweeping period epic spanning almost fifty years of the early European settlement of Aotearoa New Zealand “
• Kyle Mewburn, who wants to work on “Trailer Trash, based loosely on my mother’s itinerant life working in ‘character’ pubs in one-dingo towns throughout north Queensland and the Northern Territory, is a noir-ish thriller-cum-family-psycho-drama”.
• Amelia Rose Reynolds, who wants to work on her essay collection which includes subjects such as “being raised by lesbian mums, being a child actor, wanting to be kissed and pretending to be 21 and from New York in MSN sex-chat rooms, and my dad killing himself when I was 13.”
• Emma Hislop, who will have her collection of short stories published next year by Te Herenga Waka University Press, wants to work on her novel Looking For It
• Catherine Robertson, whose entry began, “Dear Steve, Those two words are two more than I have written of a novel Penguin Random House gave me a contract for three years ago. I don’t know the exact reason I’ve been so slow, but most likely it’s because I’m terrified. It’s based on the story of my husband’s upbringing in Wainuiomata, so it’s super personal and contains real people, many of whom I have never met in my life, so I will struggle to represent them faithfully. Plus, it’s about cycling and I don’t cycle.”
• Elizabeth Farris, who wants to work on her novel Ernie Lipinski and the Two Comma Club, which has a fantastic opening sentence: “In all of Ernie’s twenty-six years, his fingers had never once touched a tampon.”
• Laurence Fearnley, author of Winter Time, which may well be the best novel published this year, wants to work on her next novel The Long Weekend
• Ashlee Sturm, a mother of six whose short stories have been published in the anthologies Va and Huia 14, who wants to work on her novel Fix It
• Felix Desmarais, who wants to work on a “90k-word memoir about me and my transition – ostensibly anyway. It’s really a story about learning to accept yourself and how much you can thrive when you truly know and embrace who you are. It’s a love story.”
• Melody Thomas, who wants to work on a book version of her RNZ podcast The Good Sex Project
• Shelley Burne-Kennedy, who wants to work on her collection of short stories; her story “Pinching out dahlias”, published in Newsroom in July last year, remains by far the most-read story ever published at this site
• Tara Black, who wants to work on her graphic novel Medusa Framed, “a domestic noir which tells the story of Violet, a school librarian, who discovers a mysterious file of comic strips retelling the story of Medusa”
• Fergus Porteous, who wants to work on Sometimes I Go About in Pity for Myself, “a book about my relationship with my brother, Finnbar”.

Congratulations to all the shortlisted writers. The winners will be announced by good old Jesse Mulligan on his afternoon radio show this week. It’s a very prestigious award. Winners get accommodation, free breakfast, and a Sunday roast at the Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn, Auckland, and award patrons Dick Frizzell and Sir Bob Harvey are dispensing something like $4000 from their own pockets in cold hard internet banking transfer.

A huge thank you to all who entered. There wasn’t a dud among them and the assessment committee hates itself for having to say no over 100 times. Writing is hard work; time to sit down to do it is rare, and precious; all the best to the writers who didn’t make this year’s cut, and good luck to the 16 chosen few who compete for the roast, the loot, the room of their own.