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WRITERS ON MONDAYS 27 JULY 12.15PM TE PAPA. SMALL MAPS OF THE HEART: INGRID HORROCKS AND LAWRENCE PATCHETT
Ingrid Horrocks’s Acorn Prize-winning book All Her Lives explores the layered selfhood of women across generations in stories of defiance, love, and hope against the backdrop of political crises, from the French Revolution to climate change. Have This Heart sees Lawrence Patchett apply an unwavering gaze to contemporary men at work, examining privilege and upheaval, parenthood, and patriarchy. They join fellow award-winning short fiction writer Anthony Lapwood to discuss the art of the short story and writing both private and public lives. by @_modernletters_

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4 days ago

WRITERS ON MONDAYS
Monday 20 JULY 12.15-1.15pm, Rongomaraeroa, Te Papa.
NIGHT, MA: ELIZABETH KNOX

Acclaimed novelist Elizabeth Knox’s brilliant, unflinching, and beautiful memoir, Night, Ma, was 12 years in the making. It tells the story of three-and-a-half years of calamity in which her sister suffered a psychotic break, her husband’s brother died by violence, her mother was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, and life as she thought she knew it came undone. She appears in conversation with Ingrid Horrocks to discuss illness, family, care, love, how we story our lives, the art and ethics of memoir, and the loneliness of unutterable experiences. by @_modernletters_

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12 days ago

WRITERS ON MONDAYS
MONDAY 13 JULY 12.15–1.15 PM
Rongomaraeroa, Te Papa
THE ALIVENESS OF THINGS: HARO LEE, HELEN RICKERBY, AND AIRINI BEAUTRAIS
Debut poet Haro Lee’s Watching Television in a Love Motel takes on self, family, and past though the cultural lens of TV. Helen Rickerby’s genre-bending poetic memoir, My Bourgeois Apocalypse, is made with fragments from journals of the ‘weird years’, including the pandemic, while Airini Beautrais’s return to poetry finds her crafting a portrait of an uneasy time in The Salt Quilt, both sharp-witted and self-aware. These three innovative poets are joined by Chris Tse for a conversation about bending poetic form to make past and future come alive.

FREE! by @_modernletters_

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18 days ago

WRITERS ON MONDAYS!
MONDAY 6 JULY, 12.15–1.15 PM at Te Papa:
LUCKY CREATURES AND CHILDISH PALATES: JOSEPH TRINIDAD AND SHARIFF BURKE
Two fresh new immigrant voices burst onto Aotearoa’s literary scene this year, offering rich, delicious, challenging, and vibrant tales. At the launch of his short story collection, Childish Palate, Shariff Burke said: “It is through the emotional truth of outsiders in this city that we glimpse... who we might want to be, of freedom, of possibility, and of the things that get in its way—what we hold in, what we give up.” Those words are also apt for Joseph Trinidad’s essay collection, Lucky Creatures, winner of the 2023 Adam Foundation Prize and the inaugural Sarabande Prize. They join Tina Makereti in a conversation about food, memory, belonging, love, and quiet revolutions.

FREE! by @_modernletters_

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a month ago

We've so enjoyed having Tusiata Avia in the whare this year.

Is it your time? Join a long line of writers who have spent a year writing with us (only the last few pictured here - the list goes back to 1979!) Applications are now invited for Te Herenga Waka's Writer in Residence.

The Writer in Residence is an annual appointment to foster New Zealand writing, with support from Creative New Zealand.

Applications are now open for the 2027 position, with a deadline of 30 September 2026. This is a full-year residency.
About the residency

The Writer in Residence appointment is jointly funded by Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington and Creative New Zealand and housed at the University's International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML). It has been created to foster New Zealand writing by providing the appointee with the opportunity to write full-time within an academic environment for the period of tenure.

See our website (link in bio) or Te Herenga Waka's Job Vacancies site for details. by @_modernletters_

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a month ago

Winter is here, and so is Writers on Mondays! From 6 July to 28 September 2026, Writers on Mondays is celebrating Aotearoa's literary culture with a series of free lunchtime events.

Award-winning writers and exciting pairings are sure to spark lively conversations in this year's programme, held from 12.15‒1.15 pm each Monday at Te Papa.

Ingrid Horrocks, winner of the 2026 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction for All Her Lives, and Lawrence Patchett whose Have This Heart comprises "ten new stories, every one of them a winner" discuss the art of short fiction. Tim Corballis joins pip adam, and 2026 IIML Emerging Māori Writer in Residence Terri Te Tau, to discuss speculative fiction and writing the strange present and possible futures in their new novels.Tthe fantastic Rachael King and Claire Mabey speak about their newest novels for young people.

Memoirists Noelle McCarthy and Kate Camp bring big laughs and a compelling discussion about their new books (Stakes and Leather & Chains), the 1980s, hungry girls, and vampires. Beloved novelist Elizabeth Knox will discuss her acclaimed memoir, Night, Ma. We also celebrate the Year of the Horse with another great pairing, of Abby Letteri and Marty Smith.

Tusiata Avia, lauded poet and current IIML Writer in Residence will consider what poetry is for, and how to make it accessible to wider audiences. Airini Beautrais, Helen Rickerby, and Haro Lee will join Chris Tse to discuss blending forms of poetry and memoir.

Local writers Joseph Trinidad and Shariff Burke are making waves with their debut works. Shariff's collection of short stories, Childish Palate, explores Te Whanganui-a-Tara through what he describes as "the emotional truth of outsiders". Joseph's prize-winning essay collection, Lucky Creatures, is described by Lana Lopesi as a "vibrant intervention into the literary landscape".

For a glimpse of the emerging talent from the IIML's Master of Arts workshops, scriptwriting students will have their words brought to life in lunchtime performances at Circa Theatre, while the next wave of novelists, poets, and creative nonfiction writers will read in special evening events at Meow. by @_modernletters_

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a month ago

Nau mai hāere mai! Get your applications in for CREW260 Te Hīringa a Tuhi: Māori & Pasifika Creative Writing by 20 June. For details, see link in bio. This is your opportunity to work with incredible convenors, @hinepunui & @victorrodger and begin a writing practice that might take you all sorts of places. Graduates of this course have gone on to write books, take the MA Creative Writing, teach and mentor other Māori and Pasifika writers. The class consists of one three hour workshop every Monday in Semester Two, plus writing and reading at home. We'd love to see your application! MAURI ORA by @_modernletters_

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2 months ago

Staff were right back to work this week (and last) after a fairly astonishing evening in which two of our MA convenors won the Fiction and General Nonfiction categories at the @newzealandbookawards and our 2025 Emerging Pasifika Writer in Residence (and alumni) won the Poetry category. We're very proud of Ingrid, Tina and Nafanua - and of all our alumni who appeared in longlists or shortlists, or just published a book last year. It takes a lot of determination, perseverence, hard graft and faith to do any of those things, especially to do them more than once. Mauri ora! 🎉 by @_modernletters_

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2 months ago

Nau mai hāere mai!

Applications open for our Semester Two course, CREW 260: Te Hiringa a Tuhi Māori & Pasifika Creative Writing Workshop, until 20 June. An opportunity to work with @hinepunui & @victorrodger on your writing!

From the course outline:

This writing workshop is a practical paper for students who wish to produce fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry or scriptwriting which is informed by Māori or Pasifika perspectives, cultures and origins, the process of colonisation, or questions of identity and belonging. In addition, students with Māori/Pasifika heritage are free to write literature that does not directly address these subjects. The writing workshop will form the heart of this course, and students will be informed by reading in various genre by Māori, Pasifika and other writers of colour. It is expected that issues around Māori and Pasifika writing in English will be actively discussed, including the challenges of working within the dominant discourse.

See: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/courses/crew/260/2025?crn=31060#About-this-course or links in bio by @_modernletters_

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3 months ago

Talofa lava, Malo e lelei, Kia orana, Fakaalofa lahi atu, Mālo ni, Ni sa bulavinaka, Noa’ia, Fakatalofa, Kam na mauri, tēnā koutou katoa

It's that time of year again! We'd love to see your applications. by @_modernletters_

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3 months ago

"Food doesn't just fill your belly, it fills your soul."

Excited to share some excerpts from my launch speech here. I've condensed it quite a bit but you'll get the gist.

Thanks to everyone who's read the work so far! I hope you've found something in it.

PS: Can you match the images to the stories? Special thanks to Kelly van der Hurk for the artwork. by @_modernletters_

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3 months ago

Joy and grief in Ōrongohau Best New Zealand Poems 2025

Former New Zealand poet laureates take their place alongside several writers yet to publish books in the 2025 issue of Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems.

Selected by acclaimed poet, Cilla McQueen, the online collection showcases the richness and variety of New Zealand poetry—while many of the pieces deal with personal loss, others delight in absurdity.

In her introduction to the collection, Cilla describes her triage process for the “few thousand” poems that came her way for consideration. After dividing the poems into piles of “definite”, “possible”, and “probably not”, she whittled the stacks down to the final list. She writes of the final selection, “These are poems which I consider durable.”

Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems 2025 is published annually by the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University, with support from Creative New Zealand. The selection is made by a different editor each year.
Cilla declares the local poetry scene as “less a playing field than a landscape, its distinctive topography as various in all its parts and salient points as our familiar landscape of Aotearoa,” with this collection of 25 poems deeply grounded in the whenua / land. by @_modernletters_

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4 months ago