The Robert Burns Fellowship is New Zealand’s premier literary residency. The Fellowship aims to encourage and promote imaginative New Zealand literature and to associate writers with the University.
The annual, 12-month Fellowship provides an office in the English Department and not less than the minimum salary of a full-time university lecturer. It is open to writers of poetry, drama, fiction, biography, autobiography, essays or literary criticism who are normally resident in New Zealand, and who, in the opinion of the Selection Committee, have established by their published work, or otherwise, that their writing would benefit from their holding the Fellowship.
Past recipients include Emily Duncan, Victor Rodger, Fiona Farrell, Albert Belz and Kathryn van Beek.
Applications close 1 June 2026 // University of Otago
