NZSA Mid-Career Writers Award

Mid-career writers have been an area of focus for the Society for some time now, and we are pleased to be able to offer an award to recognise the oeuvre of published work by a mid-career writer. The purpose of the award is to offer recognition to an author who has made a contribution to New Zealand literature, but who may not necessarily have achieved a high level of publicity for their work.

Anecdotally, the mid-career of a writer can be slow; new writers often tend to garner more media interest for their publications, and unless a writer is shortlisted for an award, their work can quickly become neglected. The NZSA hopes, by offering this award, to go some way to redressing such issues, at least for one writer each year, by offering both some monetary assistance and recognition of their work.

The award will be open to writers of fiction, poetry, short fiction collections, drama and literary non-fiction, and is worth $3,500. For the purposes of this award, a mid-career writer is defined as being one who has published a minimum of 3 books, and has been actively writing and publishing for a minimum of 5 years; a playwright will have had at least 3 works either performed or published.

The inaugural recipient of the award was the poet David Howard. Based at Port Chalmers, David is the author of five collections of poetry, including Shebang (Steele Roberts, 2000), and The Word Went Round (Otago University Press, 2006).

The closing date for the award is 15 October. For a nomination form email programmes@nzauthors.org.nz or visit our website www.authors.org.nz