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Randell Cottage News
Pierre Furlan book launch
Please join Victoria University Press, the French Embassy, the NZ France Friendship Fund and Unity Books to celebrate the publication of The Collector's Dream by Pierre Furlan. Translated by Jean Anderson.
6pm, Tuesday 7 September
Unity Books
57 Willis Street
Randell Cottage Open Day 2010
11 - 4pm, Saturday 16 October
14 St Mary Street, Thorndon
Come and visit one of the oldest settler cottages in Wellington built
in 1867,now administered by the Randell Cottage Writers Trust and
home to New Zealand and French writers in residence. There will be writers and
other members of the trust on hand to show you around.
2011 NZ writer - apply now
Applications are now open for next year's New Zealand writer for the Randell Cottage Creative New Zealand residency. The successful writer will receive a total stipend of $20,000 (subject to funding from Creative NZ) and their stay at the cottage will be from April to September 2011. Applications close on Friday 5 November 2010 - click here for more information about the residency and how to apply.
Pat White
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Writer in residence Pat White's new book How the Land Lies is about to be published by VUP. It is endorsed by poet Brian Turner. Pat will be speaking about it and his biography of Peter Hooper at Millwood Gallery, 6 pm on August 24. Call Millwood if you want to attend (04) 473 5178.
"Belonging, White avers, is one of the key characteristics that mark us as humans. And one way to satisfy longing is to discover a place to call home.
But before that can happen we have to come to terms with it, establish the sort of harmonious relations that emerge and grow when based upon unstinting love, care and respect." — Brian Turner |
Pat White has started his own blog since taking up residence at the Randall Cottage.
Whiti Hereaka
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Former writer in residence Whiti Heraka has launched her novel The Graphologists Apprentice (Huia Press) on Thursday 29 July. It was launched by the Chair of Randell Cottage Friends Mary McCallum, and Fiona and Ian Kidman, Jean Anderson and Susan Price attended. Nga mihi nui ki a koe o Whiti.
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Forthcoming French Resident - Yann Apperry
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The French Writer in Residence at Randell Cottage from October 2010 is
Yann Apperry.
Yann is a bilingual French-American who writes in both languages and
translates his own texts with elegance and finesse. He is an
accomplished novelist, playwright, poet and librettist. In France, he
is considered one of the most talented writers of the young
generation.
Born in 1972, Yann published his first novel Qui Vive at the age of 25
and was immediately acclaimed by critics and awarded the "Prix
Bretagne". |
During the same year, he was laureate of Fondation Hachette and writer in residence at Villa Médicis in Rome (1997-98), which is one of the most prestigious residencies for French artists abroad. He then spent a few months at Villa Kujojama, in Kyoto, in 2004.
In 2000, he was awarded the "Prix Médicis" for Diabolus in Musica and the "Prix Goncourt des Lycéens" in 2003 for Farrago - two major French literary prizes. Yann Apperry's project during his stay at Randell Cottage involves music and poetry.
Susan Price
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Susan Price and her collection of 26,000 children's books are to be the subject of a new book.
Newtown author Kate De Goldi has been awarded the $100,000 Michael King writers' fellowship to research and write about children's book collector and donor Susan Price - whose parents Beverley Randell and Hugh Price donated the Randell Cottage. Susan has been deeply involved in the cottage during its renovation and as a writers' cottage. She is a keen archivist for the Trust. |
Ms Price's Kelburn residence is home to more than 26,000 children's books which are all meticulously catalogued.
"Susan is opening her archived world to me," said Ms De Goldi. "It will be a fascinating window on one child's growth through books, and as such, a launching-point for a wide-ranging commentary on children's literature."
Ms Price has also gifted thousands of books to more than 50 children, and donated her collection to the National Library, while keeping it on site. Visitors can view it by appointment.
The quotes are taken from an article in The Wellingtonian by Daniel Silverton.
Randell Cottage Garden
Work has started on revitalising the Randell Cottage Garden.
The gardener at the historic Nairn Street Cottage, Hannah Zwartz, has been taken on as the Randell Cottage gardener as part of a project to revitalise the garden.
Trustee and Friends of Randell Cottage Chair, Mary McCallum is leading the garden project which includes Hannah (above), her mother Norma McCallum - a keen gardener who has drawn up the garden design - members of the Friends of the Randell Cottage committee, and the Botanic Gardens.
The trees have been heavily pruned to let in more light (thanks to the skills of Brett at Classic Aboriculture) and a recent working bee left the garden looking much tidier and more spacious and healthy.
Mary McCallum says it was great to have Friends of the Randell Cottage, Maggie Rainey-Smith and Dame Fiona Kidman (also a Trustee), working on the garden along with her parents - Norma and Lindsay McCallum, visitor to the Open Day Julie Middleton, and gardener Hannah Zwartz. Mary says the current writer Pat White (below) also got out and dug over the garden - 'he's as much a man of the land as a man of the pen, and we really appreciate his support for this project.' She says the Trust is very pleased indeed to have Hannah as their new gardener. 'She brings her expertise to the garden, and she is a lovely person to work with. After many years of just being weeded and mowed, we are sure the garden will blossom at her hands.'
Mary's also excited the Botanic Gardens has offered spare plants to the Randell Cottage Garden. 'This is a lovely thing to see,' she says, 'because the Randells lived in the Botanic Gardens before they lived at St Mary Street and they would have brought some plants to the new garden with them. It feels the right place for the plants to come from.'
Mary expects there will be some plant-swapping between Nairn St and St Mary Street too as the two cottages have a lot in common.
Pat White
Sunday 16 May, Pat White was interviewed on Radio NZ National's Arts on Sunday hosted by Lynn Freeman (midday to 4 pm).
Pat White's poem Where the Night is Long is part of the Tuesday Poem blog.
New Zealand writer Pat White started a six month term as writer in residence at Wellington's Randell Cottage last week. Pat White says he is delighted to be living in Thorndon, so close to the natural walking areas of both the Botanic Gardens and Town Belt.
'The cottage is very close quality libraries, including the Turnbull Library,' he says,' which will be useful for my research on Peter Hooper.'
White is using his term as the Creative New Zealand Randell Cottage writer to work on a biography of Peter Hooper (1919 – 1991). A West Coast writer, teacher and fellow environmentalist, Hooper wrote award-winning fiction, as well as poetry and non-fiction.
White himself is also an accomplished poet and will give two poetry readings during May:
- Palmerston North - 7.00pm on 5 May at the City Library
- Wellington - 7.30pm on 17 May as guest poet of the New Zealand Poetry Society at The Thistle Inn.
White's published collections of poetry include Signposts (1977); Bushfall (1978); Cut Across the Grain (1980); Acts of Resistance (1985); Dark Backward (1994); Drought and Other Intimacies (1999); and Planting the Olives (2004).
White has also produced the paintings and sculpture for an exhibition and catalogue Gallipoli: In search of a family story, which has already been shown five times in the North Island and may appear again at the Waiouru Army Museum this August. White was recently writer in residence at the Robert Lord Cottage in Dunedin, and he completed an MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters last year.
New Zealand Book Council on Pat White.
Fariba Hachtroudi
Recent French resident, writer Fariba Hachtroudi, was interviewed on Access
Radio and is part of the 2010 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 spoke and read from her work at a PEN press conference on Iran, in February at Bats Theatre, Wellington, and was joined by other writers and politicians. Fariba and Lilburn House composer-in-residence John Rae collaborated on a piece of music which premiered at the event.
The previous New Zealand writer at the cottage, Kirsty Gunn, talked 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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