MENU

RAK Mason

2023 RAK MASON WRITER'S RESIDENCY - applications are now closed.

The RAK Mason Residency was established in 2014 to support writers by giving them time and space for sustained work, creativity and exploration, and to honour one of New Zealand’s foremost writers, RAK Mason (1905-1971), with his intense energy, commitment to literature, and his interest in the ways different literary forms inform each other.

2023: Juliette MacIver, a picture book and junior fiction writer, and linguist based in Porirua, New Zealand. Juliette's residency project is a seven-book series set on seven islands: she plans to make good progress on book/island two! Juliette is leading a singing & rhyming session with children, and a writing workshop with teens and adults at Greytown Library, a two-part programme with Wairarapa Word and Wairarapa Library Service.

2020: Jenny Powell, a writer, educator and performer in Dunedin, New Zealand. Jenny's Residency project was linked with her eighth collection, Meeting Rita, based on the artist Rita Angus. She appeared at the 2020 Yarns in Barns Festival, reading with Ema Saiko Poetry Fellow Rebecca Hawkes, James Brown and Tim Wilson. She also led a workshop at Rathkeale College.

2019: Jackie Davis, NZ writer. As part of the Residency, Davis worked on a novel, presented with Sue Wootton at Masterton District Library, and led a workshop with the local writig group, Quill. 

2018: Melanie Carter, poet and educator, Egypt/USA. In 2015-6, she traveled to New Zealand and considered the connections between creativity and the geological dynamism of Aotearoa's islands, spending several months at NZ Pacific Studio. During her RAK Mason Residency, Carter transcribed the voices of Normandell and its garden, worked on a long poem she began in 2015, and co-facilitated a workshop at Masterton District Library.

2017: Sian ni Mhuiri, playwright/dramatist, Ireland. Her Fellowship project was developing a play about her NZ and Irish grandmothers, in English, Gaelic and Te Reo. She collaborated with Auckland poet Makyla Curtis.

2016: Annabel Wilson, writer, Wānaka/Wellington. Wilson developed the screenplay for 'No Science to Goodbye', narrating its first performance (excerpts) at Mount Bruce Community Hall, later travelling it to Rippon Hall in Wānaka for the Festival of Colour, and to BATS Theatre, Wellington.

2015: Madeleine Slavick, writer and photographer, USA/Hong Kong/NZ. During the Residency, Slavick prepared 'Town' a book manuscript of work set in rural Aotearoa, and exhibited 'Hong Kong Song' at Aratoi Museum, which also showed at Wallace Arts Centre as part of the Auckland Arts Festival.

2014: Tracy Farr, fiction writer, Wellington. Farr worked on her second novel (The Hope Vault) at NZPS and led a workshop on writing the novel. She also began the short story 'Once Had Me' which went on to win the 2014 Sunday Star Times Short Story Award.