Verb Wellington Writer’s Residency
With Katherine Mansfield House & Garden
Verb Wellington and Katherine Mansfield House & Garden have come together to offer an opportunity to spend time in one of the world’s most vibrant literary cities to focus on your writing. We are very grateful to Professor John Ormiston ONZM who is a patron of this residency in memory of his wife, the late Professor Diana (Dinny) Lennon ONZM (1949-2018).
Applications have closed for the 2023 Residency.
Meet our 2023 Verb Wellington Writer’s Resident with Katherine Mansfield House & Garden!
We are overjoyed to announce that Kiran Dass has been selected for the Verb Wellington Writer’s Residency with Katherine Mansfield House & Garden 2023!
Writer and critic Kiran Dass has written about books, music and culture for a variety of publications including NZ Herald, NZ Listener, The Guardian, The Wire, North & South, Metro, The Spinoff, RNZ, Sunday magazine, Sunday Star-Times, Landfall, Pantograph Punch and Vice. In 2020 she was awarded a Michael King Writers Centre Residency.
Kiran was a convening judge of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, reviews books regularly on RNZ’s Nine to Noon, and is Programme Lead for WORD Christchurch.
Kiran will be working towards a collection of essays during the residency.
Photography by Rebecca Zephyr Thomas
Previous Residents
Verb Wellington Writer’s Residency supporters
Jack Remiel Cottrell: our third Verb Wellington Resident 2022
Jack Remiel Cottrell is an itinerant flash fiction and short story writer with a sideline as a volunteer rugby referee. His debut flash fiction collection Ten Acceptable Acts of Arson and other very short stories was published by Canterbury University Press in 2021, and won the 2020 Wallace Foundation Award for best manuscript.
Jack has had work published in the Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy, The New Zealand Listener, North & South, Takahe Magazine, and Ko Aotearoa Tatou – We Are New Zealand. He was a runner up in the Bath Flash Fiction Award and has been shortlisted for a Sir Julius Vogel Award in 2020 and 2022.
Iona Winter: our second Verb Wellington Resident 2021
Iona Winter (Waitaha/Kāti Māmoe/Kāi Tahu/Pākehā) lives in Koputai, Port Chalmers. Her hybrid work is widely published and anthologised in literary journals internationally. Iona creates work to be performed, relishing cross-modality collaboration, and holds a Master of Creative Writing. She has authored three collections, Gaps in the Light (2021), Te Hau Kāika (2019), and then the wind came (2018). Skilled at giving voice to difficult topics, she often draws on her deep connection to land, place and whenua.
Himali McInnes: inaugural Verb Wellington Resident 2020
Himali McInnes is a family doctor who works in a busy Auckland practice and in the prison system. She enjoys writing short stories, essays, articles, flash fiction and mediocre poetry. She has been published locally and internationally, and has either won or been short-listed in several writing competitions. She is an NZSA Mentorship recipient for 2020. Himali is also a maker of messes - through gardening, beekeeping, cooking and chicken farming. She was humbled and so grateful to be a Verb Wellington Residency recipient, as she loves Wellington (best op shops ever). She loved her time as the 2020 Verb Wellington Residency recipient and one of the stories she completed during the Residency can be found here.
Verb Wellington and Katherine Mansfield House & Garden have come together to offer an opportunity to spend time in one of the world’s most vibrant literary cities to focus on your writing. We are very grateful to Professor John Ormiston ONZM who is a patron of this residency in memory of his wife, the late Professor Diana (Dinny) Lennon ONZM (1949-2018).
Professor Diana (Dinny) Lennon had a strong connection to Wellington, where she attended Samuel Marsden Collegiate. Dinny was Professor of Population Child and Youth Health in the Department of Paediatrics: Child and Youth Health at the University of Auckland, a world class researcher, an inspiring teacher and mentor, and a superb clinician. She was passionate about children, especially those without a fair opportunity for health, particularly Māori and Pacific children. Her determination and energy to make things better for children was limitless and led to advances in clinical care, national policy change, vaccine development and rheumatic fever programmes that are some of her greatest achievements. Among her many honours, Dinny was named Plunket Woman of the Year in 1992 and the Dame Joan Metge Medal of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2008. Dinny was a life-long admirer of Katherine Mansfield.
About Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield is New Zealand’s most internationally famous author. She was a writer of short stories, poetry, letters, journals and reviews, and changed the way the short story was written in the English language. She was a rebel and a modernist who lived her short life of 34 years to the full. Her life spanned a time when gender roles for women underwent a radical change. Read more about Katherine here.
About Verb Wellington
Verb Wellington is an organisation dedicated to championing the work of writers and readers. We create events and festivals that bring writers and readers together over books, ideas and stories. We support the work of writing through residencies and publishing. Verb Wellington was started by passionate reader Claire Mabey, and musician and creative producer, Andrew Laking.
History of the Verb Writers Residency:
The inaugural Verb Wellington Residency was a collaboration between Verb Wellington, Park Hotel and Katherine Mansfield House & Garden. We came together to offer an opportunity to a writer to spend time in one of the world’s most vibrant literary cities to focus on their work.
For two weeks between October - November 2020 the Resident had a dedicated writing space at Katherine Mansfield’s birthplace in Thorndon and lived in Park Hotel on The Terrace. Residents are now accommodated in an AirBnB apartment, close to the House.