Three of the best writers in New Zealand have shared first place and good money at the prestigious Surrey Hotel and Māpua Apple Pickers Cottages Writers Residency Awards, as announced this afternoon live on air by Jesse Mulligan on RNZ.
Breton Dukes of Dunedin, and Airini Beautrais of Whanganui, each win $1500 and seven nights’ accommodation at the Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn, Auckland, while Stacy Gregg (Ngāti Mahuta/Ngāti Pukeko/Ngāti Maru Hauraki) of Auckland wins $3000 and seven nights at boutique accom in Māpua.
Second place at the Surrey is Karyn Hay of Herne Bay, who receives $1200 and five nights. In third place is Fergus Porteous (Ngāti Matakore of Ngāti Maniapoto) from Paraparaumu, who receives $800 and four nights. At Māpua, second place is Shelley Burne-Field (Sāmoa, Ngati Mutunga, Ngati Rārua) of Hawkes Bay, who receives $1500 and five nights, and third place is Ellen Curnow of the Westport News, who receives $500 and four nights.
A runner-up at each destination doesn’t receive so much as a red cent but Karl Puschmann of Papamoa scores three nights at the Surrey, and Jordan Hamel of Wellington scores three nights at Māpua. They will be fed, and bathed in honour as welcome guests.
All the writers will use the time to get some work done on their masterpieces in solitude and comfort. It’s amazing what you can achieve in a week or even a few days without life grabbing at your ears. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the award, staged in association with Newsroom, and sponsored by generous patrons Jude and Dick Frizzell; the quiet, gracious and eccentric Surrey Hotel at 465 Great North Rd, Grey Lynn (everyone should experience its charms at the bar or over a Sunday roast) has proved itself invaluable these past 10 years to previous winners such as Laurence Fearnley and Joanna Cho, while this year is the first time that alternative accommodation is on offer, thanks to the charming hostess of the Apple Pickers Cottage at 43 Apple Valley East Road, Mahana, Nelson, set beside an inlet on the pretty grounds of a former apple orchard in arcadian bliss. I have stayed at the Surrey and at the Apple Pickers Cottages. I am understating things but rate each place 11 out of 10. Do yourselves a favour and book a visit at once.
There were 233 entries and a shortlist of 11 writers chosen for each residency. It was a tough ask for a panel of four judges to narrow it down to the 22 shortlisted writers and even harder to size up the chosen 22 and decide on those who get a bed for the night and those who do not. At the Surrey, only the narrowest of margins meant that Peter Walker and Nafanua Purcell Kersel just missed out; at Māpua, Grant Smithies and Karla Akuhata came damned close. Everyone else was in the running and many had their names on the honours list at one time or another as judges bickered, argued, issued ad hominem attacks, apologised, and compromised. The contest was intense.
Huzzah, then, to those who got there. Airini Beautrais is one of very few authors who has won awards across three genres, in fiction (her 2020 book of short stories Bug Week won the Ockham fiction prize), nonfiction (she has won the Landfall essay prize) and poetry (her debut book of poetry won the best first book of poems at the national book awards). I think the only living writers in that same awarded league across these three wildly distinct writing disciplines are CK Stead, Fiona Kidman, and Ian Wedde. She wants to work on a kind of memoir. Breton Dukes is the author of Party Boy, published in February, a wildly expressive telling of a Dunedin cook hooked on Tramadol, and surely the best novel of 2026. He wants to work on a novel that begins with a character cleaning the fridge. As the winner of the Mapua residency, Stacy Gregg will work on At Every Bend, A Taniwha, a Māori supernatural sequel to her book Nine Girls. She writes, “Taniwha finds me returning to my hometown with a plan to do for Ngāruawāhia what Stephen King did for Maine.” She has sold over a million copies of her books meaning she has sold more copies than all the 232 applicant writers put together and multiplied by, roughly, 500.
In second and third place respectively at the Surrey, Karyn Hay is best known as an especially intelligent broadcaster but is also the accomplished author of three novels, her debut Emerald Budgies winning the best first book prize at the national book awards, and Fergus Porteous is unpublished as an author but who I rate alongside John Summers as one of the best new prose masters in New Zealand. The elevator pitch of Hay’s novel: “A woman goes missing.” Porteous wants to work on a kind of memoir. His draft was filled with terrific sentences, viz: “I inherited a deep-seated terror of the consequence of the marital promise, and soon after my grandmother died, I got divorced.” Runner-up Karl Puschmann elegantly ghosted the recently published memoir of Shihad’s Jon Toogood, Home Again, and is working on a thriller about a drug deal gone horribly wrong.
Judges were impressed by the ideas from fiction writers Shelley Burne-Field, Ellen Curnow, and Jordan Hamel, who were awarded places at the Māpua residency. Respectively, their projects are a collection of short stories, a climate change novel, and a story about three students who go mad in Dunedin, ie something really funny. A note on Burne-Field: her short story ‘Pinching out dahlias’, from 2021, remains the most-read story ever published at ReadingRoom, and my feeling is that she is on the verge of writing something that will elevate her to the front rank of New Zealand writing.
My thanks to everyone who entered, to generous patrons Jude and Dick Frizzell, to the golden throat of Jesse Mulligan, and to the welcoming manors of the Surrey and the Apple Pickers Cottages. New Zealand literature will be the better for it, hopefully. Congratulations to the winners of the 2026 anniversary edition of a literary award that allows writers a small window of time to escape from the bantering world and do the thing that occupies their best waking and dreaming hours: write.
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