O’Sullivan

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 Trustee 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. ‘