Huzzah! We announce the winners of New Zealand’s most coveted writers residency in central Auckland. An author who wants to write a book about professional mermaids – there is such a thing, and it’s worryingly kind of huge – is the winner of the 2018 Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency Award in Association with … Read more
Over 80 writers entered New Zealand’s premier literary award – but only 10 have made the shortlist. We’ve sent out emails of regret to the unsuccessful applicants for the 2018 Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency Award in Association with The Spinoff but right here, right now is the first time that the 10 shortlisted … Read more
As the deadline looms for the 2018 Surrey Hotel writers residency award, and entries continue to pour in from published authors and exciting nobodies, 2017 winner Charlotte Graham-McLay files a report on her experience at the Surrey. She danced a lot. During the school holidays, I used to throw tights and leotards and grubby, smelly … Read more
As the deadline fast approaches for entries to the 2018 Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency In Association With The Spinoff Award, Wairarapa essayist and 2017 winner John Summers presents his diary of the prize – a five-night stay in Grey Lynn’s Surrey Hotel. I arrive overdressed. I got up at 5:30am, and wore my overcoat … Read more
Antony Millen of Taumarunui was runner-up of the 2016 Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency in Association with The Spinoff Award – and used his time at the spacious and splendid Grey Lynn hotel to write 28,000 words of his next YA novel. Yowsa! My Surrey Hotel writing residency really started and ended on the train … Read more
Sunday Star-Times sleuth Kelly Dennett writes about the true crime book she’s very nearly completed as winner of the 2016 The Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency in Association with the Spinoff Award. Her prize was $500, pizza vouchers, a free roast meal – and a week’s accommodation at the luxurious and intellectually stimulating Surrey Hotel. In … Read more
Margo White reviews All At Sea by Decca Aitkenhead. It was a cloudless, calm Caribbean morning in Calabash Bay, Jamaica. From the porch of her holiday house, Decca Aitkenhead could see her four-year-old son, Jake, paddling in the shallow water, still in his pyjamas and at the feet of his Dad, Tony. A couple of minutes … Read more