Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship

About the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship

The Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship is a national literary fellowship offered annually in partnership with The Frank Sargeson Trust. The fellowship provides the opportunity each year for a talented published New Zealand writer to write full-time in residence at the Sargeson Centre, adjacent to the University of Auckland, with an annual stipend of NZ$40,000.

The Frank Sargeson Trust established the fellowship in 1987, to commemorate Frank Sargeson and provide assistance for New Zealand writers. Frank Sargeson was influential not only through his writing, but also as a friend and mentor to other writers.  In 1997 Buddle Findlay became the commercial sponsor of the fellowship, and is proud to support the literary future of New Zealand.

Buddle Findlay National Chairman, Peter Chemis, says the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship is about giving New Zealand writers the freedom to craft their stories.  “It has given creative space to some of our most notable writers, allowing them time to develop and polish their ideas into works that can become part of our cultural heritage.  “Being a writer is not an easy task.  In many cases it requires purpose and self sacrifice.  Our involvement with the fellowship acknowledges this.”

Frank Sargeson

Described as one of New Zealand's greatest literary innovators and mentor to the literary community, Frank Sargeson was a novelist and short story writer who became internationally known as the pioneer who broke from colonial literary traditions to an idiom that expressed the rhythms of New Zealand speech and experience. He qualified as a lawyer before committing himself to full-time writing and a day-to-day struggle which he described as "physically, mentally and financially exhausting".

2013 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellows

Two leading New Zealand fiction writers have been announced as the recipients of the annual Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship for 2013.

The two new fellows, Hamish Clayton and Tanya Moir, will each spend five months in residence at the Sargeson Centre in central Auckland and receive a $20,000 grant.

Buddle Findlay National Chairman Peter Chemis says the fellowship is about giving New Zealand writers the freedom to craft their stories.

“It has given creative space to some of New Zealand's most notable writers, allowing them time to develop and polish their ideas into works that become part of our heritage" he said.

"Being a writer can be a difficult task, it requires a lot of self sacrifice. Our involvement with the fellowship acknowledges this".

Hamish Clayton holds degrees in Art History and English Literature from Victoria University of Wellington, where he is currently working on a PhD in English Literature. He writes regularly for Art New Zealand and New Zealand Books and was the writer in residence at the Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt from September to October 2012. His first novel Wulf (Penguin 2011) won the 2012 NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction.

"To be selected as one of the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellows for 2013 is a real honour and a wonderful opportunity. It allows me to take some brief time away from my PhD commitments and to honour my other great passion which is fiction writing. I feel very privileged and lucky to be given this support and encouragement", says Hamish.

Hamish will move into the Sargeson Centre in February and will spend his time on a new novel which he began soon after finishing his first. "It’s a story with a contemporary setting, unlike the historical Wulf, but it plays with similar themes. It’s concerned with the gaps between art and reality, and between memory and history. With the time and space the fellowship allows, I’m looking forward to settling in and finishing it and hopefully doing it the justice that I think it deserves."

The second fellow, Tanya Moir, a novelist based at Muriwai in Auckland, Had her first novel La Rochelle's Road published by Random House New Zealand in 2011 and her second novel Anticipation is due to be published in March 2013. Tanya has previously been long-listed for the Commonwealth Book Prize. Her career, prior to writing novels, included stints as a radio copywriter, print journalist and television promo producer.

Tanya says of the fellowship "I'm hugely excited to be given the chance to sit down to five months of uninterrupted, guilt-free work on my new project. After some years of living and writing in relatively remote locations, it will be fabulous to have not only the quiet of the Sargeson Centre in which to work, but research facilities like the Central and Auckland University Libraries on my doorstep".

Tanya plans to use her time at the Sargeson Centre to work on the first draft of her new novel, a contemporary western about an "outlaw" and would-be cowboy who has gone to ground in the hills of Central Otago.

Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellows

The inaugural Sargeson Fellow was the distinguished novelist, short story writer and poet Janet Frame, who had a close friendship with Frank Sargeson. The importance of this friendship to Janet Frame's personal and literary life is clear from her account of the time she spent with Frank Sargeson in the second volume of her autobiography, An Angel At My Table.

Janet Frame was succeeded as Sargeson Fellow by the noted New Zealand poet, Kevin Ireland, who was also a close friend of Sargeson. The Sargeson Fellowship was subsequently awarded to writers such as Alan Duff, Elspeth Sandys, Michael King and Marilyn Duckworth.

• 2012 David Lyndon Brown and Anna Taylor
• 2011 Sue Orr and Mark Broatch
• 2010 Sonja Yelich and Sarah Laing
• 2009 Steve Braunias and Julian Novitz
• 2008 Brigid Lowry and Paula Morris
• 2007 James George
• 2006 Emily Perkins
• 2005 Fiona Samuel and Peter Cox 
• 2004 Karyn Hay and Craig Marriner
• 2003 Toa Fraser and Debra Daley
• 2002 Riemke Ensing and Denis Baker
• 2001 Vivienne Plumb and Chad Taylor
• 2000 Sue Reidy, James Brown and Charlotte Grimshaw
• 1999 Tina Shaw and Kapka Kassabova
• 1998 Catherine Chidgey and Sarah Quigley
• 1997 Shonagh Koea and Diane Brown

More information

For more information on the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship, please contact:
Gemma McDivitt, Marketing Manager
Email sargesonfellowship@buddlefindlay.com

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