Summer Residency for Emerging Writers

Dunedin was treated to a special announcement recently at the magical University Book Shop Midwinter Evening: a bookshop-based annual residency for emerging writers. It was noted by Phillippa Duffy, University Book Shop Otago General Manager, that New Zealand’s first writing residency, the Robert Burns Fellowship, was established in 1958 in Dunedin marking the bicentenary of the birth of Robbie Burns. Now, 58 years later and to mark 70 years of bookselling, the University Book Shop with the Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage Trust has created another first.

‘We often have writers who say light-heartedly “I could live here!”, and now with the help of the Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage Trust they almost can,’ laughs Phillippa Duffy.

The summer residency provides an emerging writer with up to six weeks’ accommodation in the Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage, a stipend, and an office and administration base at the popular University Book Shop.

‘This residency is a very exciting new initiative which will provide emerging writers with an invaluable opportunity to develop new work,’ says Otago’s Kyle Mewburn, President of the NZ Society of Authors and recent winner of the Picture Book Readers’ Choice Award at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children & Young Adults.

The collaborative vision of the University Book Shop and Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage Trust is to be applauded. This is the first such bookshop residency in New Zealand, and the country’s first (and only) UNESCO Creative City has good reason to be proud.