Madison Hamill
Madison is interested in neurodivergence and gender and is writing a novel about missing persons and a futuristic city facing a mysterious infestation.
Commenced 2024
Madison Hamill is the author of Specimen: Personal Essays, which won the E.H. McCormick Prize for a best first work of general non-fiction at the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. She completed a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2018, with Distinction, and works as a book and publications editor. This PhD marks a shift in genre for Madison into the world of fiction but will further explore some of the critical questions in her previous non-fiction work around identity and storytelling.
Madison writes: 'My speculative fiction novel, The Surfacers, will follow a young autistic woman who is stranded by time travel in the distant future in a city perched above an ancient tunnel system. The residents are a superstitious lot and seem to fear expressing emotion. They won’t talk about the terrifying creatures who dwell beneath them, let alone help Max understand the forces of time that will take her home again.
'My critical component will pick up from my novel. I will potentially explore novels that challenge ideas of neurodivergence, gender, caretaking and heroism, including the works of Kazuo Ishiguro and Ursula Le Guin.'
Read more:
- A list with links to my online work can be found on my website
- Order Specimen