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