Ōtaki writer Joanna Cho has won the $3000 first prize in the 2025 Surrey Hotel writer residency award, announced live on air just before 2pm today by Jesse Mulligan on his RNZ Afternoons show.
And Lord of the Rings actor Bruce Hopkins, who captured the public imagination these past few weeks of the contest when he made the shortlist for his project, documenting the dead animals he photographed when hiking the 3000km Te Araora trial, is among the runners-up.
Judges selected seven writers from a shortlist of 10 in the 2025 Surrey Hotel Writers Residency Award held in association with Newsroom and generous patrons, Jude and Dick Frizzell.
First: Joanna Cho of Ōtaki, who wins $3000 and a week’s accommodation at the Surrey, an amazing hotel in Grey Lynn, Auckland, to work on a collection of poems about new motherhood.
Second: Mereana Latimer (Newlands), who wins $1000 and five nights at the Surrey, to work on a novel set in the Cook Islands.
Third place, equal: Jane Arthur (Wellington) wins $500 and four nights at the Surrey to work on her novel about a woman facing redundancy, and Leeanne O’Brien (Piha) wins the same things to work on her collection of short stories. Arthur won the prize for best first book poetry at the 2020 Ockham awards, and O’Brien won the Sargeson prize for best short story of 2021.
Runners-up, tied: three writers do not receive a red cent but qualify for three nights at the Surrey plus a Sunday roast if they stay in the weekends. They are Liv Sisson (Auckland), author of the bestselling Fungi of Aotearoa, who wants to write a book about moths; David Ciurlionis (Auckland), who wants to work on a post-apocalypse novel set at a fortified pā on the maunga of the Auckland volcanic field; and the legendary Bruce Hopkins (Auckland), he who has the dead-critters project.
Grand winner Joanna Cho was born in Daegu, South Korea, studied English and philosophy at the University of Auckland, won the Biggsy poetry prize as a student at the IIML, and was shortlisted for best first book of poems at the 2023 Ockhams for her debut collection People Person (Te Herenga Waka University Press). It totally ought to have won. Justice is restored with her Surrey victory.
Her daughter Plum – aw! – was born in February. She wrote in her entry, “I’ve been finding motherhood very inspiring and have been writing poems and notes on my phone during Plum’s naps … Sometimes I get the chance to sit at my laptop but mostly I am holding Plum all day and then we both sleep around 7 (she doesn’t sleep well so I take what I can get). It would be really cool to be able to dedicate time to writing and have my mum babysit.”
In second place, Mereana Latimer wrote in her entry, “With support from a mentor this year, with thanks to Ngā Kaituhi Māori New Zealand Society of Authors and Emma Hislop, I’ve made progress and have the bones of a first draft of a novel. The story I’m writing aims to reflect that I come from a long line of unbelievably stubborn and completely unhinged Cook Islands women, who I would love to see more of in print. I suppose it’s also my attempt at posthumous solidarity with the great-aunt whose death my family covered up and whose unmarked grave we only found when we went to bury my Nana.”
In third place, Jane Arthur wrote, “My novel is about Holly, who lives in Wellington and is facing redundancy. I am describing it as a ‘coming-of-middle-age’ novel. Holly has had to go back to her hometown when her dad has an accident, and so she faces a sort of reckoning of: argh, god, what is my life?”
In tied third place, Leeanne O’Brien emailed, “I am working towards a collection of stories that I hope to submit for publication. They include a story about a woman who, each Friday at 5pm, meets a man at the Wellington train station where they fuck in the vandal-proof toilet behind the bus timetable.”
The most exuberant covering letter came from runner-up Liv Sisson. She raved, “Moths are strange, just like this literary award. They are freaky. Loathed, even. But they are also fascinating. And critical to our survival – they’re more efficient pollinators than bees and just as important. I would love to live ALONE even briefly at THE SURREY HOTEL and to spend all my time reading about, writing about and possibly even trapping some moths with my portable LED light trap (ordered special from the UK).
“I can see it now – I’m sipping a pint, chatting with punters, then nipping outside to see what moths have flown in, beckoned by my light trap and the warm, welcoming glow of THE SURREY HOTEL. I scuttle back to my room, flick through my reference materials. I confirm who this moth is and begin to piece their story together. Over 400 species fly around Auckland each night. But this one is an ancient relic of the sky, unchanged for 80 million years, she’s a lime green pūriri moth, a dinosaur of sorts who spends five YEARS as a caterpillar, munching on the wooden pith of a pūriri tree all in anticipation of and preparation for just five DAYS spent as a moth.”
Huzzah to all the winners and thanks to all 143 who entered. Loudest huzzah to grand winner Joanna Cho. She joins previous residency winners such as Paula Morris, Talia Marshall and Colleen Maria Lenihan in the Surrey canon. I think she’s a wonderful writer, of poetry and prose. Her biographical prose writings includes one of the best things I have ever published, a romantic memoir of cruising in her boyfriend’s 1994 Mazda Familia GT-X in the teenage wastes of Auckland. She was in turn immortalised in a frankly incredible portrait of her by Plum’s father, writer Fergus Porteous, about how they met in a class at the IIML: “Joanna and I started going to Les Mills together. It was a strange way to fall in love.”
