Janet Frame's Legacy Lives On

Janet Frame's Estate gifts $15,000 to the NZ Society of Authors

Janet Frame's Legacy Lives On

The Janet Frame Literary Trust has allocated $15,000 to the New Zealand Society of Authors (formerly known as PEN NZ). Before she died in 2004, Janet Frame directed that the ongoing income from her literary estate be used to benefit New Zealand writers. Her trustees announce the awards every year on the author's birthday (August 28).

"The Society of Authors is very grateful for the award and plans to use it to set up a biennial award for mid-career or established writers of literary or imaginative fiction and poetry. The first award will be given in 2008," says Executive Director Liz Allen. Janet Frame was a life member and past honorary President of the Society of Authors. The internationally acclaimed writer was famously saved from a lobotomy when one of her doctors decided to cancel her scheduled brain surgery after noticing the publicity for the PEN-sponsored Hubert Church Memorial award won in 1952 by Frame's first book.

Since her death Frame's estate has given out $55,000 in grants to literary organisations and individual NZ writers, but in a strange twist of fate Janet Frame's own work is still winning prizes. Her new book of poetry The Goose Bath, which she had been working on before her death, last month won the poetry category at the Montana NZ Book Awards. The volume had been published within two years of her death, a period of grace which has seen at least three recently deceased authors since 2004, claim posthumous prize money at the NZ Book awards (the Montana awards recognise the best work published in the previous year).

Frame trustee Denis Harold will present a cheque for $15,000 to the NZSA director on Sunday the 2nd September after the inaugural Janet Frame Memorial Lecture to be held at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The lecture, to be given by Owen Marshall, takes place as part of an all-day celebration of the launch of NZ Book Month.

ENDS

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