Emerging Māori Writer in Residence

About the residency

The Emerging Māori Writer's Residency was established in 2019 by Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, with the support of Creative New Zealand. It runs for three months in the first half of each year, funding dependent, and includes a writing room, a mentor from the Māori arts community, and a stipend of $15,000.

Applications are invited from Māori writers in most areas of literary activity, including drama, fiction and poetry (page and performance), devised performance, creative nonfiction, and graphic novels, but excluding film and television scriptwriting. Projects may be written in English or te reo Māori.

Applicants should be writers at an early stage of their career, with a growing body of work, and must be either New Zealand citizens or hold permanent residency. There is no restriction on the occupation of applicants, but they should not be full-time employees of Creative New Zealand or the University, nor have been employed on a full-time basis by the University in the twelve months prior to the closing date.

Applications typically open mid-year and close late October for the following year's appointment.

There will be a notification on this page during the application period, and a link to the full role description and application on the Current Vacancies page of the University's website. Enquiries can be directed at any time to modernletters@vuw.ac.nz.

The 2024 Resident is Shelley Burne-Field.

We also offer the three-month Emerging Pasifika Writer's Residency, and the full-year Victoria University of Wellington/Creative New Zealand Writer's Residency on an annual basis.

2024 Emerging Māori Writer in Residence—Shelley Burne-Field (Sāmoa, Ngati Mutunga, Ngati Rārua, Pākehā)

Shelley Burne-Field. (Photo credit: William Field) — 2024 Emerging Māori Writer in Residence Shelley Burne-Field. (Image by William Field.)

Ms Burne-Field writes fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. She comes from Te Matau-a-Māui (Hawke's Bay) and is an alumna of the University of Auckland's Master of Creative Writing, as well as Te Papa Tupu mentoring programme. Her work has appeared in local and international literary journals and anthologies, on Newsroom, E-Tangata, and RNZ.

In 2022 she was awarded a Surrey Hotel residency and was the only New Zealand finalist in that year’s Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her poem 'Another Brown Face' won the Poetry in English category of the 2023 Pikihuia Awards. She has hosted Māori and Pasifika writers' panels at the Hawke’s Bay Readers and Writers Festival and appeared as a kaituhi at the Central Hawke's Bay Readers and Writers Festival, Between the Lines.

Her first children's book, Brave Kāhu and the Pōrangi Magpie, was published by Allen and Unwin in April 2024. Two upper-middle-grade novels are forthcoming from A&U.

During her three-month residency, Ms Burne-Field worked on a novel set in a future Aotearoa, on an estate built on confiscated land, where the rise of Artificial General Intelligence is reshaping the lives of tangata whenua, Pasifika, and settler communities.