Tina Makereti Selected as 2014 Writer in Residence

MEDIA STATEMENT

3 December 2013

For immediate release

Tina Makereti Selected as 2014 Randell Cottage Writer in Residence

Kapiti Coast writer Tina Makereti is to be the 2014 Creative New Zealand Randell Cottage Writer in Residence. Of Ngati Tuwharetoa, Te Ati Awa, Ngati Maniapoto, Pakeha and, in all probability, Moriori descent, Makereti is a graduate of the International Institute of Modern Letters, where she has completed an MA and PhD in Creative Writing. Her first collection of short stories, Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa, was published in 2010 by Huia Publishers and won the 2011 Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards Fiction Prize. A novel, Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings will be published by Random House in March 2014

Makereti has also been recognized for her non-fiction, winning the 2009 Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing - Non-fiction, in 2009. She teaches creative writing and English at Massey and Victoria Universities . Her work has appeared in a range of literary journals, magazines and anthologies including the NZ Listener, Huia Short Stories 8, Hue and Cry 4, JAAM 27 and Turbine 08.

Makeretis Randell Cottage project is an historical and allegorical novel based on the experiences of the indigenous people, in this case, a Māori child, who were exhibited in Victorian London, and elsewhere in Europe, as cultural artefacts and oddities. She's planning a first person narrative which will explore the dehumanisation and loss of dignity involved.

Selection panel chair Dame Fiona Kidman says this is “an exciting and original project, drawing on an almost forgotten but unsettling aspect of New Zealand's history. Im looking forward to a thought-provoking and challenging work which will prompt readers to consider how modern culture treats the „other.”

“We are also looking forward to welcoming Tina and her family to the Cottage,” Kidman says.

For her part, Makereti says she is “really thrilled to be Randell Cottage Writer in Residence next year. It means a huge amount to be to receive this support and be able to dedicate myself to this project. Im also intrigued about how living in an historic 19th century cottage in central Wellington might feed the writing in interesting ways.” Randell Cottage Writers Trust, P O Box 25204, Featherston Street, Wellington 6146, New Zealand www.randellcottage.co.nz

The Randell Cottage Writers Trust was established in 2002. The restored Thorndon cottage, a B-category historic building, was gifted to the trust by the Price family and hosts two writers a year; one from New Zealand and the other from France. The 2014 French resident, the young adult writer Maud Lethellieux arrives in Wellington in January 2014. The current New Zealand resident is journalist and political commentator Denis Welch who is writing a biography of Norman Kirk, who led New Zealands Third Labour Government from November 1972 until his death on 31 August 1974.

The Randell Cottage is supported by Creative New Zealand, the Wellington City Council and the New Zealand France Friendship Fund.

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Websites: www.tinamakereti.com and www.randellcottage.co.nz

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