Writer in Residence
The Writer in Residence is an annual appointment to foster New Zealand writing, with support from Creative New Zealand.
Applications for the 2027 position will open in mid-2026. This is a full-year position.
About the residency
The Writer in Residence appointment is jointly funded by Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington and Creative New Zealand and housed at the University's International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML). It has been created to foster New Zealand writing by providing the appointee with the opportunity to write full-time within an academic environment for the period of tenure.
Other residencies
We also offer a three-month Emerging Pasifika Writer in Residency and a three-month Emerging Māori Writer's Residency, both funded by Creative New Zealand.
Current Writer in Residence—Tusiata Avia
In 2020 she was an Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate, and was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to poetry and the arts. In 2024, Tusiata received a Creative New Zealand Senior Pacific Artists Award.
Tusiata’s poetry collections include Wild Dogs Under My Skirt (2004, also staged as a theatre show), Bloodclot (2009), the Ockham-shortlisted Fale Aitu | Spirit House (2016), the Ockham-award-winning The Savage Coloniser Book (2020, also staged as The Savage Coloniser Show), and Big Fat Brown Bitch (2023). Her new book, Giving Birth to My Father, will be published on 6 November 2025.
While holding the residency, Tusiata will work on a new collection of poems provisionally titled How to Make a Terrorist. She says the collection will move from the personal to the global, “from inside an MRI machine scanning my brain, to Christchurch five years after the mosque shooting . . . to Hana Rawhiti Maipi-Clark tearing up the Treaty Principles Bill in parliament.”
Previous writers in residence
Copyright for the images below belongs to Robert Cross.
2025 Anna Smaill (photo to come)
