COMMITTEE
Chair
Mary McCallum is a Wellington writer, reviewer, bookseller and creative writing tutor. She published her first novel The Blue (Penguin 2007) and was shortlisted for the Prize in Modern Letters. She was also awarded the Louis Johnson Bursary 2007 to work on her second novel, Precarious. Mary has an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute in Modern Letters. Her immediate French connection is through a French Great Grandmother.###################################
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Dame Fiona Kidman DCNZM OBE is a Wellington writer. She has written 24 books, including the prizewinning novel The Captive Wife and her two-volume memoir At the End of Darwin Road (2008) and Beside the Dark Pool (2009). Fiona is a Trustee of the Randell Cottage Writers Trust, and the New Zealand Book Month Board, as well as being a President of Honour of the New Zealand Book Council. As a Katherine Mansfield fellow she lived in Menton, France, in 2006, and travelled the country with a contingent of New Zealand writers promoting New Zealand literature. ###################################
Treasurer
Sian Robyns is a Wellington translator and communications consultant. Her translation of Randell writer Fariba Hachtroudi’s 2009 novel Le douzième imam est une femme? was published in Canada in 2011 as The Twelfth Imam’s a Woman? She holds an MA (Distinction) in Literary Translation Studies and a BA Honours (First Class) in French from Victoria University of Wellington.
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Membership Secretary
Maggie Rainey-Smith is a novelist, poet, and travel writer, with two published novels About Turns (Random House 2005) and Turbulence (Random House 2007). She is the current Chairperson for the Wellington Branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors.
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Robyn Skrzynski was a teacher of German and Latin before retiring in 2005. She has lived in France and been a member of Alliance Francaise in Wellington, and an office holder on the committee, for thirty years. As an Oral Historian, Robyn interviewed members of AF as part of the AF Centenary Oral History project. In 2010, Robyn was made a Life Member of the Goethe Society Wellington and the New Zealand Association of Language Teachers.
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Publicity Officer
Kathryn Carmody – bio to come
Anita Woods – bio to come.
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Become a Friend
Become a Friend of Randell Cottage
email Robyn at info@randellcottage.co.nz