Sue Orr
Phone: 04 463 6854
Email: modernletters@vuw.ac.nz
Sue convenes one of two CREW 254 Short Fiction | He Kōrero Paki Workshops offered annually. The other workshop is convened by Anthony Lapwood. Sue is also the 2024 convenor of the CREW 354 Long-form fiction Workshop.
About
Sue completed an MA in Creative Writing at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington in 2006, and a PhD in 2016. She has published two short story collections – Etiquette for a Dinner Party (Vintage, 2008) and From Under the Overcoat (Vintage, 2011). From Under the Overcoat was shortlisted for the NZ Post Book Awards 2012, and won the People's Choice Award. In 2011, she was a Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow.
In 2015 she published a novel, The Party Line (Vintage). Her work has also been published in the NZ Listener, Sport, in various anthologies and has been broadcast on Radio New Zealand National. It has been translated into several languages.
Her fourth book, a novel Loop Tracks, was published in New Zealand in 2021 by Te Herenga Waka University Press, and in Australia in 2022 by Upswell Press.
Sue has taught creative writing at Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland, and at Massey University, Albany. She has also supervised and examined post graduate theses for Auckland University and Victoria University of Wellington, and has mentored and examined for Whitireia's Diploma in Creative Writing course.
In 2016, Sue established a creative writing programme for Women's Refuge in Auckland with fellow Victoria University of Wellington PhD creative writing graduate Angela Andrews. On returning to Wellington in 2018, she joined the Write Where You Are Charitable Trust to teach in Wellington prisons. She has established creative writing programmes at refuges in Porirua and Lower Hutt and trained new teachers for these courses.
Sue currently teaches creative writing in Wellington women's refuges, and at Rimutaka Prison.
Read more:
Te Herenga Waka University Press author profile
Academy of New Zealand Literature profile
'Loop Tracks: a novel about choice, consequence and male control' (The Spinoff, 19 October 2021)
The Party Line reviewed on RNZ (September 2015)
Course information
Read more about CREW 254 Short Fiction | He Kōrero Paki Workshop, and CREW 354 Long-formFiction Workshop, including timetable and fee information and a downloadable course flier.