Lynn Davidson shares news from Scotland
Our writer-in-residence in 2021, Lynn Davidson, has since settled in Edinburgh, where she is teaching and continuing the family research on which part of her writings has been based.
New Zealand writer
essa may ranapiri – 2026
essa may ranapiri (Ngaati Raukawa, Ngaati Puukeko, Te Arawa and Clan Gunn) is a poet, writer and academic living in Kirikiriroa Hamilton.
Saraid de Silva – 2025
Saraid de Silva is a Sri Lankan Pākehā writer and arts worker based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, and the first writer of Sinhalese descent to take up residency at Randell Cottage, and intends to work on her second novel during the time of her residency.
Hinemoana Baker – 2024
Poet and performer Hinemoana Baker (Ngāti Raukawa-ki-te-Tonga, Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa, Kāi Tahu, England, Germany) will be using her six months in residence at Randell Cottage to work on a new collection of poetry, Exhaust World.
Hinemoana is a writer, performer, and educator currently based in Berlin. She has published four previous collections of poetry with Te Herenga Waka University Press: mātuhi | needle (2004), kōiwi kōiwi (2010), waha | mouth (2014) and Funkhaus (2021).
Of her new project Exhaust World she says: “As the name suggests, it will feature poems of despair and desperation. There will also be a good dose of fury, revenge, and some very dark jokes. The overall vibe is, yes, exhausted, both globally and personally. As if the title were an instruction, spoken into the past, and addressed to the machinery of geopolitics in which we find ourselves enmeshed no matter where on earth we live today.”
Hinemoana says she is thrilled to be taking up the residency: “I’m still pinching myself a bit, to be honest. Any opportunity to be able to write uninterrupted, especially with financial support, is extraordinarily appreciated. The huge bonus with this residency, of course, is that it means I can come home for a while. The last eight years in Germany have been extraordinary and formative, to say the least, and I am so looking forward to bringing my full self to the Randell Cottage Writers Residency and to the city I love, Te Whanganui-a-Tara.”
Further reading
Watch an interview with Hinemoana Baker
In this second video, Hinemoana reads the intricately-woven poem Placard: Te Ahumairangi, triggered by the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti in November 2024.
A shortlisting and longlisting for Randell Cottage writer Stephen Daisley
Randell Cottage resident in 2017, Stephen Daisley, has been shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction in the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for his book A Better Place.
Do You Still Have Time for Chaos?
The latest book by Lynn Davidson, Randell Cottage resident in 2021, was launched on 13 February at Unity Books in Wellington.
Invitation to Lynn Davidson’s book launch on 13 February
We are thrilled that Lynn Davidson is about to launch the memoir she worked on while a resident at Randell Cottage. All are welcome to the launch of Do You Still Have Time for Chaos? at Unity Books on 13 February.
Michael King Writers Centre residency for Rose Lu
Congratulations to Rose Lu, an alumna of Randell Cottage, who has been selected as a 2024 writer in residence at the Michael King Writers Centre in Devonport, Auckland. Rose spent April to September 2022 at Randell Cottage.
Hinemoana Baker selected as 2024 Randell Cottage Writer in Residence
Poet and performer Hinemoana Baker has been selected as the 2024 Creative New Zealand Randell Cottage Writing Fellow, and will be residing and writing in the Cottage from July to December 2024.
Rose Lu selected as 2022 Randell Cottage Writer in Residence
Tramper, software engineer, essayist, and now novelist Rose Lu is to be the 2022 Creative New Zealand Randell Cottage Writing Fellow.
Lu will be using her six months at Randell Cottage in Wellington’s historic Thorndon village to write her first novel.
Currently untitled, the project follows the story of Moon, a second-generation Chinese-New Zealander, and Hsiao-Han, who migrated to Aotearoa New Zealand in her mid-twenties.
A graduate of the Master of Creative Writing workshop at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University’s Institute of Modern Letters, Lu’s first book was the 2019 essay collection All Who Live On Islands, winner of the IIML’s 2018 creative non-fiction writing prize. She will take up her placement in the twentieth year of residencies at Randell Cottage and will join Trustees and Friends in celebrating this milestone.
Of her project, she says: “I want this book to be divorced from the expectation that POC are thinking about their race in relation to a Pākehā majority, by having the primary dialogue be between Chinese and Taiwanese characters. I also want to challenge mainstream notions of representation. We all have complicated relationships to home, family and language, and I want to write a story set across different times and generations to explore that.”
Trustee and selection panel convener Sian Robyns says the Trust received many very good applications in a variety of genres, all deserving to see the light of day.
“We got it down to a shortlist of four. We considered, we debated, we went back and forth, and it was very close. Rose’s project stood out for its perspective and her choice to represent diasporic Asians to each other rather than to the mainstream; her use of tramping, an iconic aspect of New Zealand culture as a means of thinking about risk-taking; and for a compelling and controlled writing sample.”
Lu says she is honoured to be the 2022 resident and is looking forward to living and working in Randell Cottage.
“I was surprised and delighted to find out that I had received the Randell Cottage residency. I was out on a walk at the time, which seems fitting given the nature of my project. Covid has made it a strange couple of years, but the silver lining has been that I’ve spent a lot more time in the outdoors in Aotearoa, and this has been the inspiration for my novel that I like to glibly describe as “Brokeback Mountain but in the Tararua Ranges”.
“I’m really looking forward to being resident in Randell Cottage and walking up Te Ahumairangi every day.”
The Randell Cottage Writers Trust was established in 2001. The restored Category II historic building, gifted to the Trust by the Randell-Price family, hosts two writers a year: one from New Zealand and the other from France. In 2021, it was home to poet and essayist Lynn Davidson. The 2021 French writer, Caroline Laurent, has had her residency delayed by Covid-19 border restrictions. At this stage, it looks as if she may be able to arrive in Wellington for the second half of 2022.