The joint-first recipient of a new writers’ residency is ‘looking forward to swapping the wet maritime climate of Aotea Great Barrier Island for the continental cold of a Maniototo winter’.
The island’s Tim Higham will share the residency with Dunedin’s Rhian Gallagher. The two have six-weeks apiece from July to September to work on their writing while staying in a house provided by a local in the Maniototo village of Oturehua.
‘The residency,’ says Gallagher, ‘provides writers with real support: a generous stipend and warm shelter. For me personally, it’ll provide time and space, free from the necessity of earning a living, to gain traction on a new body of work.’
Higham is looking forward to building, ‘in a very different environment’, on themes he explored in his recently published book, Notes from a Small Island: Finding my Place on Aotea Great Barrier Island (Cuba Press).
Rosemary Riddell, chair of the trust associated with the residency, says the opportunity attracted ‘strong applications from mid-career authors throughout New Zealand whose writing interests, no matter what the genre, intersected with the theme of our first residency – environment and landscape.’
Riddell explains that the theme is one important to trust members, all writers, all living on the same road in Oturehua, and all attracted to the village because of its Maniototo location.
Just before applications for the residency closed, trust member Mike Riddell (husband of Rosemary) died unexpectedly.
In recognition of his work as an author and film-maker and the key role he played in establishing the trust, the residency is named after him – the Mike Riddell Writers’ Residency. As another trust member, acclaimed author, poet, and environmentalist Brian Turner, says, ‘Mike was an insightful and thoughtful writer and a great advocate for social justice and the natural world.’
The trust also runs the popular annual Under Rough Ridge Writers’ Retreat held in Oturehua at the end of September. Both retreat and trust take their name from the original name for Oturehua. ‘This year,’ says Rosemary Riddell, ‘we’re excited to know we’ll have Tim and Rhian taking an active role in the retreat alongside us.’
Under Rough Ridge Writers’ Trust/Retreat/Residency website www.roughridge.nz
