VINCENT O’SULLIVAN was born in Auckland in 1937 and is one of New Zealand’s leading writers. He graduated from the universities of Auckland and Oxford and has lectured in the English departments of Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Waikato.

He is the author of two novels – Let the River Stand, which won the 1994 Montana NZ Book Awards, and Believers to the Bright Coast, which was short-listed for the 2001 Tasmania Pacific Region Prize – and many plays and collections of short stories and poems. His poetry collection Seeing You Asked (Victoria University Press, 1998) won Best Book of Poetry at the 1999 Montana NZ Book Awards, the same year that Believers to the Bright Coast was runner up for the Deutz Medal for Fiction. His 2001 collection of poetry Lucky Table (Victoria University Press) was short-listed in the poetry section of the 2001 Montana NZ Book Awards. Nice Morning for it, Adam was published to acclaim in 2004.

He has a well-earned reputation as a thoughtful and incisive editor and critic and was joint editor of the five-volume Letters of Katherine Mansfield, and has edited a number of major anthologies. He has recently published a biography of John Mulgan called Long Journey to the Border.

He lives in Carterton in the Wairarapa.

 

Poem: Reading the runes