Wellington, New Zealand: 2008 - Writers
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David Geary (Judges’ Prize winner)
David Geary is a dual citizen of New Zealand and Canada, and of English, Scottish, Irish, and Maori (Ngā Māhanga - Taranaki) blood. He graduated from Victoria University of Wellington, NZ, with a B.A. in English Literature, including Bill Manhire’s Creative Writing course. He then went on to receive an Acting Diploma in Drama from Toi Whakaari The New Zealand Drama School.
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Eleanor Catton (Audience’s Choice Award winner)
Eleanor won the Adam Prize for her first novel The Rehearsal in 2007. Published by VUP in New Zealand, it has been since sold to publishers in the UK, the USA, and Europe. In 2007 Catton also won the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition, and was awarded the 2008 Schaeffer Fellowship to the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.
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Sarah Laing
Sarah Laing is a fiction writer and graphic designer. Her first collection of short stories, Coming up Roses, was published in 2007, and followed her win of the 2006 Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition. She illustrated the book Macaroni Moon (2009) and in the same year published the novel, Dead People’s Music, which is set in Wellington and New York. Laing was a Michael King Writers Centre Writer in Residence in 2008.
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Carl Nixon
Carl lives in Christchurch, New Zealand where he was born in 1967. He lives with his wife and two young children. He has a Masters in Religious Studies from the University of Canterbury. He is a professional full-time writer of plays, short stories and novels.
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Jo Randerson
Jo is a Wellington-based writer, performer and theatre-maker. She has published 4 books: The Spit Children, The Knot, The Keys to Hell and Through the Door. For more information please see www.joranderson.com and www.barbarian.co.nz.
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Briar Grace Smith
Briar Grace Smith descends from the Ngapuhi tribe in the north of New Zealand. She writes for theatre, television and film and her short fiction has been included in various anthologies. Her plays have toured both New Zealand and internationally and include Purapurawhetu, Haruru Mai, When Sun and Moon Collide and Potiki’s Memory of Stone. She was an inaugural recipient of the NZ Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2000 and the writer in residence at Victoria University in 2003. She was selected to attend the Sundance screenwriters Laboratory in Utah in 2006 and her first screenplay The Strength of Water premiered at Rotterdam and Berlin film festivals in 2009.
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