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Randell Cottage News
Fariba Hachtroudi
Current French writer Fariba Hachtroudi was interviewed on Access
Radio and is part of the upcoming Writers and Readers Week in Wellington.
French Iranian writer-in-residence at Randell Cottage, Fariba Hachtroudi, speaks on National Radio with Kim Hill. Listen here.
And she speaks and reads from her work at a PEN press conference on Iran, Monday February 1 at 6 pm at Bats Theatre, Wellington, and will be joined by other writers and politicians. Fariba and Lilburn House composer-in-residence John Rae have collaborated on a piece of music which will premier at the event.
The Randell Cottage Writers Trust is excited to welcome French writer and Iranian exile Fariba Hachtroudi as the new writer-in-residence. She will live and work in the cottage until March 2010.
The previous writer at the cottage, Kirsty Gunn, talks about the
musicality in the works of Katherine Mansfield at the Oxford Literary
Festival.
Successful Open Day
Randell Cottage hosted a very successful Open Day on Tulip Sunday this year. Over 60 people came through the cottage and talked with Trustees and Friends about its history and its current use as a writers' residency.
The visitors ranged from an intrepid Beagle who dragged his owners in the door to a young boy and his mother who were fascinated by the Shacklock range to a couple who renovated old cottages and were delighted to walk through a prime example of 'stripped down colonial Georgian'.
There were the usual writers interested in a place for writers to write, and those who just happened by after enjoying the tulips. The gorgeous posters organised by Friend of the cottage, Maggie Rainey-Smith and printed by Apex, seemed to attract a great deal of interest. The Trustees and Friends of the cottage had as much fun as the visitors.
We finished up with drinks which representatives from the French Embassy and the Lilburn House attended, as well as Susan Price whose family gifted the cottage to the Trust.
Celebrating Katherine Mansfield
Randell Cottage Trustee and author Vincent O'Sullivan and recently departed Randell Cottage writer in residence Kirsty Gunn in conversation in the garden of the Villa Maria Serena in Menton. Both were keynote speakers at the Katherine Mansfield symposium 'Celebrating Katherine Mansfield' in Menton in September. A summary of Kirsty’s talk is here. Photo: Delia da Sousa Correa
Kirsty Gunn — "This place you return to is home" – Katherine Mansfield, Thorndon and the Randell Residency
The Randell Cottage NZ Writer in Residence 2009, Kirsty Gunn, joins Randell Cottage Trusteee Vincent O'Sullivan as a keynote speaker at the Katherine Mansfield symposium 'Celebrating Katherine Mansfield' in Menton in September. Here's what she will talk about:
'Thorndon – with its houses and hills, its glimpses of the harbour and its walks and ways – stamped Katherine Mansfield‘s imagination and made the remembering of it a sort of literary project that continued throughout her life. This informal talk will show how that early world of hers has come to surround me during this past winter I have spent living just up the road from where she was born and brought up, and will describe how Mansfield‘s sense of home and away that has always been a great inspiration upon my own writing has actively come to bear upon the work that I have made while I have been here as a Randell resident. I will read one of the short stories I‘ve written while here - 'The Little House' - and discuss my own literary project, a collection of journal entries, essays and short stories entitled —Thorndon -- all centred around this very particular part of the world. '
Kirsty Gunn
Kirsty Gunn is currently in residence at the Randell Cottage with her two daughters who are attending Queen Margaret's College. She will be joined for a short period by her husband David Graham who is Managing Director of Granta.
Kirsty is researching her project on Katherine Mansfield called Thorndon and working on a collection of short stories. Kirsty was guest speaker at a NZ Society of Authors event at the Thistle Inn in Thorndon on May 25 and spoke about Necessary Scenes in Fiction. She has also spoken to a Writers Master Class at the International Institute of Modern Letters on June 3 at Victoria University.
Kirsty spoke at the Writers on Monday series 12.15-1.15 pm August 3 at Te Papa, the Writers Read series 6-7 pm Thursday August 6 at Massey University's Wellington Campus, Buckle Street, and at Palmerston North City Library 7 pm Friday August 7. Randell Cottage Trustee Mary McCallum will chair the Massey and Palmerston North events.
After arriving in New Zealand, Kirsty Gunn had to return briefly to Scotland for family reasons which meant she had to regretfully cancel her events at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival in May.
The Writer's Life as a Juggling Act
Kirsty Gunn talks to The NZ Herald's Siobhan Harvey. Saturday May 09, 2009
It's 10 pm in London and New Zealand-born novelist Kirsty Gunn has had a difficult day. "I've only just got the girls to bed," she says, guiltily.
The girls in question are Gunn's daughters, Millie, 11, and Katherine, 8.
"School's out over here, so the girls wanted to spend the day with me. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have a problem with this, but I've just returned from a teaching and reading tour of the Gironde district in Bordeaux, so a few academic deadlines for Dundee [where Gunn is professor of creative writing] have piled up. More:
French writer Olivier Bleys combines astronomy and art in New Zealand novel
March 2009 — Award winning novelist Olivier Bleys returned to France this week, having made substantial progress on his latest work during his New Zealand stay.
Author of 12 books (including six historical novels) that have been translated into nine languages, Olivier used his six month stint as writer in residence at Wellington’s Randell Cottage to tackle his first contemporary novel.
Set in present day New Zealand, the novel combines meteorites and an exhibition of drawings by Piranese at Victoria University’s Adam Art Gallery, an eccentric astronomer based at Lake Tekapo, and an art specialist from France.
“I didn’t spend most of my time writing,” Olivier says. “It was important for me to travel and research my book.”
In the well loved Audi car he purchased here, Olivier covered more than 8,000 kilometres.
“You are lucky in New Zealand,” Olivier says. “It’s still possible to get off the beaten track here, and to feel that you’re finding things out for yourself. In France, there are always guide books telling you where to go for the best view.”
With his research and a good chunk of the writing done, Olivier expects to complete the novel on returning to his home town of Bordeaux.
“Once I have spent enough time thinking and preparing, the writing happens quite quickly,” he says. “I like to write to meet a deadline, and I think I can finish this work by July.”
Olivier’s most recent novel is being launched while he is flying back to France, and his next project?
“After that, I’m planning a science fiction work,” he says,” which will be another new departure for me.”
Dominique Mainard awarded the Prix Des Libraires
Pour Vous written by former Randell Cottage resident, Dominique Mainard, during her stay at the cottage has been awarded the Prix des Libraires which is voted for by 325 French booksellers.
Watch Dominique Mainard describe Pour Vous (in French)
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