Lane, Murray awarded 2021 NZ Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowships

In New Zealand, Chloe Lane and Lee Murray have been awarded the 2021 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowships.

Lane and Murray will share a stipend of NZ$20,000 (A$18,500) and will each undertake a four-month tenure at the Sargeson Centre in Auckland.

Lane, whose first book The Swimmers was published by Victoria University Press in 2020, will use the fellowship to continue work on her second novel. Set in New Zealand and Florida, the new work ‘explores motherhood and marriage in the shadow of a small-town murder’, according to a statement from the fellowship’s organisers. ‘The main tension comes from the narrator’s relationship with her husband, and how it has changed since the arrival of the couple’s young son.’

For her fellowship project Murray, a multi-award-winning writer and editor of science fiction, fantasy and horror, will draw on her experience growing up as a third-generation Chinese New Zealander to research and write a series of prose poems based on real life narratives which explore Chinese women’s diaspora in a New Zealand setting, including some of her own family stories. ‘Fox Spirit On A Distant Cloud’ is the working title for the project, for which Murray will ‘look at the sense of otherness and alienation experienced by Chinese women since Chinese immigrants first came to this country’.

The Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship is awarded annually and is designed to provide an opportunity for a published New Zealand writer to write full-time in residency. More information is available online.

Category: Awards Local news