Surrey Hotel writers residency award returns

Calling all New Zealand writers wanting to lay their heads in a de luxe inn in central Auckland and win thousands of dollars and eat an enormous Sunday roast for free: the annual Surrey Hotel Writers Residency Award in association with Newsroom and Mr and Mrs Frizzell is back up and running, open now, this second. Winners get to stay for up to a week at the Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn, and share $5000 in prize money as put up by painter, legend, and Otis’s dad Dick Frizzell, and Dick’s better half Jude.
Entries close soon, very soon; and a winner will be announced sometime in October, live on Jesse Mulligan’s afternoon show on Radio New Zealand, as per tradition. The award is now in its eighth year. Last year’s winner was Emma Ling Sidnam, author of debut novel Backwaters. Runners-up were Miro Bilbrough of Sydney, Rachel Lees of Tauranga, and Auckland writer Nat Baker, who only this weekend completed the second draft of the novel she worked on during her Surrey residency.
A number of other past winners and finalists were unpublished when they arrived at the Surrey. Some have remained unpublished. Writing is one of the toughest games in town, and the Surrey Hotel Writers Residency Award recognises these challenges by inviting complete nobodies, dreamers, the mad and the deluded to enter alongside established authors and serious literary artistes. No age limit. No means testing. It’s all about the work.
There are caveats: entrants must have had something published somewhere, in print or online. It’s open to novelists, short story writers, poets, and writers working in nonfiction – but it’s for writers of books, and books only for adults, meaning no screenplay writers, no playwrights, no comics illustrators, no YA or children’s authors. It’s all about a book intended for grown-ups.
Dick and Jude Frizzell believe in putting their money to good creative use – if only they were the Government! – and each year for the past three years they have set aside $5000 towards the residency. Their loot will be shared between three or maybe four winners. The first-place winner will pocket $3000 and receive seven nights free accommodation at the singular Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn, Auckland, with cooked breakfast thrown in plus the Surrey’s famous Sunday roast. Vegetarians can elect for an extra carrot I suppose. Second place will receive five nights accommodation plus breakfast at the Surrey, and some money; third place will receive four nights accommodation plus breakfast, no roast, and some money; and, thanks to the splendid generosity of Surrey manager and all-round awesome person, Louisa Yau, there is also a runners-up category which offers three nights accommodation, no roast, no money, maybe breakfast,
Imagine if all the winners turned up for their residency at the same time! It would be like the famous Yaddo writers retreat on a 400-acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York, except that the Surrey is cooler. The dear old Surrey is widely considered the grooviest writers’ residency in New Zealand arts and letters. It’s got ye olde Tudor stylings and the swimming pool has to be seen to be believed. The residency allows winners the comfort, glamour and fun of staying at the distinctly odd and certainly very striking Surrey to make some sort of progress on their masterpiece.
Last year there were 123 entries. Twenty made the longlist. This year’s judging panel of four include literary figures of considerable repute in London, Melbourne, New York and Invercargill.
Fame and fortune await, as does the opportunity to make some art. I heard from Emma Ling Sidnam the other day. She emailed about the short story manuscript she worked on as winner of the 2023 award, “You Can’t Cheat in a Lucid Dream, the new name for what was previously Ghosts, is undergoing NZSA manuscript assessment right now. I hope that can give me some proper feedback so I can then tighten up to start submitting to places.”
Entries for the 2024 residency award are open until Sunday, October 6. They must be emailed to [email protected] with the subject line in screaming caps THE 2024 SURREY HOTEL WRITERS RESIDENCY AWARD IN ASSOCIATION WITH NEWSROOM AND DICK FRIZZELL.  Send in a brief covering letter outlining the project you have in mind, and it wouldn’t hurt to maybe attach a few pages of the work in progress. Word Doc only, don’t even think about Google Doc. Something about who you are could be useful.
Dick and Jude Frizzell’s loot will only be transferred when the winners actually arrive at the Surrey Hotel.
Good luck to all who apply; the clock ticks steadily towards the chimes of midnight, Sunday October 6.
Full list of first-prize winners of the Surrey Hotel writers residency award:
2016, Kelly Dennett, who went on to to publish The Short Life and Mysterious Death of Jane Furlong (Awa Press), winner of the Ngaio Marsh crime writing award for best book of nonfiction
2017, Serena Benson
2018, Megan Dunn, who worked on The Mermaid Chronicles (Penguin), to be published this month and reviewed in ReadingRoom by Anna Rankin
2019, Colleen Maria Lenihan, who worked on Kōhine (Huia), one of the best short story collections of the past 20 years
2020, Mia Gaudin
2021, Talia Marshall, who was unable to experience the Surrey Hotel because Covid but had the wherewithal to finish Whaea Blue (Te Herenga Waka University Press), one of the best books of 2024
2022, J Wiremu Kane
2023, Emma Ling Sidnam
The full list of finalists who stayed at the Surrey Hotel and worked on manuscripts that were later published to various acclaim: Ashleigh Young (poetry collection How I Get Ready, Victoria University Press); John Summers (essay collection The Commercial Hotel, Victoria University Press); Naomi Arnold (astronomy classic Southern Nights, HarperCollins); Claire Baylis (crime novel Dice, Allen & Unwin); Nick Ascroft (poetry collection The Stupefying, Te Herenga Waka University Press); Shilo Kino (YA novel The Porangi Boy, Huia); Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall (short story collection  Tauhou, Te Herenga Waka University Press); Laurence Fearnley (At The Great Glacier Hotel , Penguin); and Becky Manawatu (Kataraina, Makaro Press).