NZ literature's coolest prize
Calling all writers wanting the rare chance to sit down in privacy and comfort to work on their latest masterpiece. Applications open today, as of now, this very second, for the prestigious 2022 Surrey Hotel-Newsroom writers residency - with an added bonus of good money, and a good roast.
The first-place winner will receive a week's free accommodation at the singular Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn, Auckland, with cooked breakfast thrown in plus the Surrey's famous Sunday roast. Vegetarians can elect for extra carrots I suppose. They will also receive $3000 from the altruistic pockets of one of New Zealand's greatest living painters, Dick Frizzell. He has decided to sponsor the award purely because he's a good guy.
There are two runners-up. Second place will receive five nights accommodation at the Surrey, and $1000; third place will receive three or four nights accommodation, and $500. Some of this money will come from another set of altruistic pockets: Sir Bob Harvey, one of New Zealand's greatest living legends.
The Surrey Hotel is widely considered the grooviest writers residency in New Zealand arts and letters. It’s got ye olde Tudor stylings and the swimming pool has to be seen to be believed. The residency allows winners the comfort, glamour and honour of staying at the distinctly odd and certainly very striking Surrey to work on whatever literary project is dear to their heart (with caveats, below).
Nominations for the 2022 Surrey Hotel Writer's Residency Award in association with Newsroom close incredibly soon. The cut-off is midnight, Saturday July 30.
Email me at stephen11@xtra.co.nz with the subject line in screaming caps THE SURREY HOTEL WRITERS RESIDENCY IN ASSOCIATION WITH NEWSROOM. Send in a brief covering letter outlining the project you have in mind, and it wouldn’t hurt to maybe attach a few pages of the work in progress. Established authors and complete nobodies will be assessed on the merit of their application so long as they have had something published somewhere. Novelists, short story writers, poets, memoirists, biographers....This is for authors of books only, and books only for adults; no screenplay writers, no playwrights, no comics illustrators, no YA or children's authors. It's all about a book written for grown-ups.
Winners will need to take up their residency before December 1. Covid could always return and muck things up. Too bad. The prize money will only be collected when the winners actually arrive at the Surrey Hotel.
A shortlist for the 2022 prize will be published around about Wednesday, August 10, and the winners will be announced a day or so later, live on Radio New Zealand by good old Jesse Mulligan, a long-time supporter of the Surrey residency.
Last year's winners were Talia Marshall (first), Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall (runner-up), Kiran Dass and Fake Baby author Amy McDaid (third-place shared). I asked Amy what it was like to stay and write at the Surrey for three nights to work on her second novel, and she replied, "My spacious room with its old oak desk, plush carpet and dark wood, felt writerly and like the kind of place where masterpieces are produced. My bed was comfy, the breakfast was nourishing. I felt at home amongst the eccentric Tudor decor. Has anyone mentioned the heated pool, framed by a mural of boats sailing the Waitematā?
"The Surrey Hotel residency was a wonderful opportunity to tuck myself away, free from the demands of child and a messy kitchen, and do that which I love the most: write, fret, delete, and write some more. I finished my first draft of novel two at the Surrey, so it will always hold a special place in my heart."
