Sue Orr

Phone: 04 463 6854
Email: modernletters@vuw.ac.nz

Sue will join our MA in Creative Writing teaching staff for 2025, convening a Writing for the Page workshop during Kate Duignan's Research and Study Leave. Sue normally convenes one of two CREW 254 Short Fiction | He Kōrero Paki Workshops offered annually, and also taught CREW 354 Long-form Fiction in 2024.

About

Sue completed an MA in Creative Writing at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington in 2006, and a PhD in 2016. She has published two short story collections – Etiquette for a Dinner Party (Vintage, 2008) and From Under the Overcoat (Vintage, 2011). From Under the Overcoat was shortlisted for the NZ Post Book Awards 2012, and won the People's Choice Award. In 2011, she was a Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow.

In 2015 she published a novel, The Party Line (Vintage). Her work has also been published in the NZ Listener, Sport, in various anthologies and has been broadcast on Radio New Zealand National. It has been translated into several languages.

Her fourth book, a novel Loop Tracks, was published in New Zealand in 2021 by Te Herenga Waka University Press, and in Australia in 2022 by Upswell Press. It was longlisted for the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and has been optioned for television production. Sue is in the final stages of completing her fifth book, another novel.

Sue has taught creative writing at Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland, and at Massey University, Albany. She has also supervised and examined post graduate theses for Auckland University and Victoria University of Wellington, and has mentored and examined for Whitireia's Diploma in Creative Writing course.

In 2016, Sue established a creative writing programme for Women's Refuge in Auckland with fellow Victoria University of Wellington PhD creative writing graduate Angela Andrews. On returning to Wellington in 2018, she joined the Write Where You Are Charitable Trust to teach in Wellington prisons. She has established creative writing programmes at refuges in Porirua and Lower Hutt and trained new teachers for these courses.

Sue currently teaches creative writing at Rimutaka Prison.

Read more

• Te Herenga Waka University Press author profile
• Academy of New Zealand Literature profile
• 'Loop Tracks: a novel about choice, consequence and male control' (The Spinoff, 19 October 2021)
• The Party Line reviewed on RNZ (September 2015)

Course information

Read more about the MA in Creative Writing | Te Kohinga Auaha, or about about CREW 254 Short Fiction | He Kōrero Paki Workshop, including timetable and fee information and a downloadable course flier.