The Otago College of Education Creative New Zealand Children’s Writer in Residence Fellow 2024 is Feana Tu’akoi

Feana Tu’akoi

Feana Tu’akoi is a Kirikiriroa Hamilton-based writer, with a long career in the field of children’s writing.

“When our four children were pre-schoolers, nearly all children’s fiction was Pālangi-centric. I couldn’t find any books that included Tongan characters, Tongan ideas, Tongan situations or even Tongan legends,” she says.

“As far as books were concerned, kids like ours didn’t exist. Our fānau needed to see themselves represented in print, to access stories about people and situations that made sense to them and to understand that these stories matter. So, in 1997, I started writing them.”

During her Fellowship, Tu’akoi intends to write her first mystery adventure; potentially book one of a series.

“I’d like to write the type of story I loved most as a child, but situate it firmly in a fāmili like ours, weaving through some of the ideas that continue to impact us.”

This Fellowship will be somewhat of a homecoming for Tu’akoi, who grew up in Te Wai Pounamu.

“I’m especially looking forward to being back on the mainland, as I grew up in Temuka and had lots of holidays in Ōtepoti Dunedin. I’m excited to reintroduce myself to the city and to explore local tourist spots – all in the name of research, of course.”

Tu’akoi has a strong background in educational writing. She writes regularly for the NZ School Journals, the Ready to Read series, the New South Wales School Magazine and Wendy Pye’s Sunshine series and has done so for more than 20 years. She has more than 230 titles to her name, including stories, poems, picture books, junior fiction novels, school readers, plays and radio stories.

She is also an award-winning trade writer. Eight of her ten commercially released books have been recognised in various awards. Most recently, she won the 2022 Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon Award for her recently released mid-grade novel, Lopini the Legend.

The 2024 Robert Burns Fellow is Mikaela Nyman

Mikaela Nyman

Mikaela Nyman is a Taranaki based writer of Finnish heritage from the Åland Islands, born into the Swedish linguistic minority. She has also lived in Vanuatu.

The poet, novelist and non-fiction writer says she’s still finding it hard to believe she’s been awarded this Fellowship.

“It means I’m going to be able to focus on a year of writing in a nurturing environment – it’s a joy and a privilege, and an incredible validation for a writer.

“As writers and artists we all need to nurture our creativity, and we need to set aside time to immerse ourselves and experiment, take risks,” Nyman says.

During her Fellowship, Nyman plans to research and write her second novel, about a dysfunctional family with themes of peace, war and belonging.

She envisages this to be more experimental than her first novel Sado (2020), a climate fiction set in Vanuatu, and says “It will draw on my experience of enforced separation from my father and my native Åland Islands – autonomous and demilitarised, which are now under threat from Putin’s forces”.

Nyman also plans to collate and edit a collection of poetry by the late ni-Vanuatu writer and freedom fighter Mildred Sope, who was among the first indigenous poets to be published by Albert Wendt prior to Vanuatu’s independence in 1980. Nyman interviewed Sope for her PhD in creative writing, inter-disciplinary with Pacific Studies and went on to co-edit with Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen, Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology, published by Te Herenga Waka Press to critical acclaim in 2021.