Each year the NZ Society of Authors Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa elects a President of Honour, who is tasked with delivering the Janet Frame Memorial Lecture – an update and commentary of the current literary and book industry scene in Aotearoa New Zealand. This year’s lecture, by 2020-2021 NZSA President of Honour Paula Morris, is happening on 4 November.

MacLaurin Chapel, University of Auckland
18 Princes St,  Auckland City

November 4, Wednesday
6.30pm for 7.00pm start

NZSA President Mandy Hager will open the event

Paula Morris, Associate Professor, MNZM (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whatua) was born in Auckland in 1965. She is the award-winning author of short stories, essays and novels, including Queen of Beauty (Penguin 2002), Rangatira (Penguin 2011) and False River (Penguin 2017). A collaboration with photographer Haru Sameshima on Robin Hyde will be published by Massey University Press in 2020. She is also the co-editor of two forthcoming anthologies: Ko Aotearoa Tātou (Otago UP) and New Asian Voices (Auckland UP). Paula convenes the Master of Creative Writing programme at the University of Auckland Paula sits on the Māori Literature Trust, the Mātātuhi Foundation, and NZ Book Awards Trust, where she chairs the Ockham NZ Book Award committee; she is also a former trustee of the Michael King Writers Centre and one of the foundation board members of The Coalition for Books. She is the founder of the Academy of New Zealand Literature (www.anzliterature.com) and The Three Lamps (T3L) literary journal.

Appointed an MZNM in the 2019 New Year Honours, she has appeared in festivals in New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, Europe, the UK, Canada, and the US, and been awarded a number of prestigious international residencies, including Bellagio (the Rockefeller Foundation), Passa Porta in Brussels, the Brecht House residency in Denmark, and the International Writers and Translators residency in Latvia. In 2019 she was the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow.

Read more about Paula Morris