Michael King Fellowship Recipient Announced

Date: 16 June 2008

Michael King Fellowship Recipient Announced

Dame Fiona Kidman has been awarded the $100,000 Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers’ Fellowship to write three projects; a collection of short stories and two novellas exploring early writers in New Zealand.

The Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers’ Fellowship is the largest writing fellowship available in New Zealand and supports established writers to work on a major project over two or more years.

Fiona Kidman said that the Michael King Writers Fellowship will allow her to concentrate on some of the projects that have been of interest to her for several years.

“I am looking forward to researching some of the complex jigsaw puzzles of our literary past, as well as writing fiction again without the pressure of piecemeal work. My work was interrupted for a long period by family illness and to come back to a full writing life in my sixties has required some major leaps of faith in myself. It’s difficult to express how much it means to have that belief reflected by my peers”.

Creative New Zealand Chief Executive Stephen Wainwright said he was pleased the Fellowship would support a new body of work from one of New Zealand’s most prolific writers.

“Fiona Kidman is one of the great New Zealand literary figures of our time,” Stephen Wainwright said. “Her writing, both fiction and non fiction, has been an essential element of the telling of New Zealand stories and she has been a constant advocate for writers and literature in this country.”

Previous recipients of the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers’ Fellowship are Owen Marshall, Vincent O’Sullivan, CK Stead, Rachel Barrowman and Neville Peat.

For more information about Fiona Kidman visit her website www.fionakidman.co.nz.

ENDS

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