Left to right: Kate Duignan (MA workshop convenor), Gil Ostini (Adam Prize winner), Elizabeth Knox (supervisor), and Damien Wilkins (IIML director).
A novel about a haunted Italian Australian family and a poetry collection of friendship, loss and longing have been awarded the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing and the Biggs Family Prize in Poetry by the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) for 2024.
Examiners described Rockface by Gilbert Ostini, which won the 2024 Adam Prize, as mature, courageous, and absorbing. Gilbert is a recent graduate in English Literatures and Creative Communication at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
He wrote the winning manuscript, Rockface, as part of his 2024 Master of Arts (MA) at the IIML. Examiner Lawrence Patchett describes the novel as bringing “a subtle, sophisticated approach to the question of how to begin to reckon with the intertwining of family and settler histories.”
“Rockface is a big, generous, compassionate novel, set in a vividly rendered Queensland,” says lecturer Dr Kate Duignan. “Through the eyes of therapist Corey and his Anglican priest sister Mirella, it explores how one family’s history meets the history of the land.”
Gilbert says, “I’m still reeling, to be honest, and very honoured—this award has seriously impressive whakapapa! And it’s been a delight to spend this whole precious year writing and yarning and panicking and drinking coffee/martinis with such a generous, thoughtful, hilarious group of people. There is so much good, brave, beautiful writing being done right now, so, in a political moment that feels particularly hostile to creatives, it’s wonderful to be reminded of the support for, and value of, this work.”
Supported by Wellingtonians Verna Adam and the late Denis Adam through the Victoria University Foundation, the $5,000 Adam Prize is awarded annually to an outstanding student in the MA in Creative Writing programme.
The Biggs Family Prize in Poetry was awarded to Tess Ritchie for Girl Meets Dog, a poetry collection including at its centre a moving sequence of poems addressing the loss of a mother. Tess Ritchie is a New Zealand poet who lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne. She is the daughter of the Dunedin fiction writer and poet Ruth Pettis, who died in 2008.
Supported by Peter and Mary Biggs, the $5,000 Biggs Family Prize is awarded to one of the most promising poetry folios produced during the MA year. Examiners praised the energising variety of voice and form, the careful crafting, and the sound and language play of this collection.
“These are poems that dive headlong into art and the heartplaces, friendships, and communities that hold us together, as well as the griefs and fractures that threaten to pull us apart,” says senior lecturer Chris Price.
Tess says, “I am overwhelmed by this news and very honoured. Having a year to pour into poetry has been a real privilege and just cemented that this is what I want to do, so to receive this prize feels extra motivating. I am so grateful to my supervisor, Chris Price, for her careful, generous feedback, and to our lush MA class. You gave me so much. And thank you, of course, to Mary and Peter Biggs. I love poetry and can’t wait to write more.”
Extracts from both prize-winning works are available to read online in the 2024 edition of the IIML’s literary journal Turbine | Kapohau, which was launched last night.
Previous Adam Foundation Prize recipients include authors Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall, Rebecca K Reilly, Eleanor Catton, Ashleigh Young, Hera Lindsay Bird, and Tayi Tibble. Previous Biggs Family Prize winners include Nina Mingya Powles, Bill Nelson, Morgan Bach, Joanna Cho, and Sam Duckor-Jones.
For more information contact Dr Kate Duignan, Lecturer, kate.duignan@vuw.ac.nz
