Our congratulations to Rachel O’Neill, the Randell Cottage New Zealand Writer-in-Residence in 2023, who has been awarded the prestigious Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. We have just had the pleasure of featuring Rachel as one of the guest readers at our annual Open Day, held as part of the Wellington Heritage Festival.
Our most recent resident, Rachel O’Neill, has reflected on the six months they spent in Randell Cottage in a new video and report to Trustees.
Huge thanks to everyone who joined us in person and online on Tuesday at the National Library to hear from 2023 Randell Cottage residents Rachel O’Neill and Caroline Laurent, in conversation with trustee Francis Cooke.
Please join us on Tuesday 21 November at the National Library – or via zoom link if you’re unable to attend in person.
You’re invited to the National Library Auditorium on 21 November to get to know our latest writers.
New Zealand poet Rachel O’Neill has just finished their placement at Randell Cottage and will share their experiences in conversation with Trustee Francis Cooke.
The French Embassy’s Cultural Counsellor, Eric Soulier, will lead a discussion with newly-returned laureate, Caroline Laurent, who was inspired by her brief visit to Wellington last December and is halfway through an exciting new work.
Light refreshments will be served before & after the event. Koha (suggest $5 pp) would be appreciated.
Time: 5:15 to 7.30 pm (formalities 6.00 to 7.00 pm)
Venue: Auditorium, National Library, Molesworth Street, access from Aitken Street
RSVP: info@randellcottage.co.nz by 19 November.
Can’t make it in person? A zoom link will be available through the National Library.
Read the latest newsletter from the Friends of Randell Cottage and find out about events in October and November.
Find out about three upcoming events you won’t want to miss.
Read the July 2023 newsletter from the Friends of Randell Cottage.
After the June AGM, current resident Rachel O’Neill talked with Siân Robyns, journalist and former Trustee of the Randell Cottage.
Rachel O’Neill is an artist, film maker, teacher of creative writing, communications professional, and, above all poet. O’Neill will be using their six months at Randell Cottage to work on two projects: completing their third book, Symphony of Queer Errands, and a fourth, a collection of prose poems titled Master of the Female Half-Lengths.
O’Neill is a graduate of the Master of Creative Writing workshop at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University’s Institute of Modern Letters. Their two previous collections of prose poems are One Human in Height (Hue and Cry Press, 2013) and Requiem for a Fruit (We Are Babies, 2021). They have been extensively published in anthologies and journals – most recently Best Small Fictions 2020 (Sonder Press, 2021), Out Here: An Anthology of Takatapui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa New Zealand (AUP, 2021), and Best New Zealand Poems 2019 ( IIML, 2020).
Wearing their artist hat, they provided illustrations for Bernadette Hall’s 2016 poetry collection Maukatere: floating mountain (Seraph Press, 2016) and they collaborate with arts collective All the Cunning Stunts, exhibiting in the European Union and Aotearoa.
Further reading