{"id":1538,"date":"2016-06-10T14:04:35","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T02:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/?p=1538"},"modified":"2016-06-10T14:04:35","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T02:04:35","slug":"triple-shortlisting-for-masseys-artist-in-residence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/2016\/06\/10\/triple-shortlisting-for-masseys-artist-in-residence\/","title":{"rendered":"Triple shortlisting for Massey’s artist in residence"},"content":{"rendered":"

F\"David<\/a>or Massey University\u2019s literary Artist-in-Residence David Hill there is always a \u201csense of delighted disbelief\u201d whenever he is nominated for an award, even though it has been a pleasing recurrence for the prolific author.<\/p>\n

The Taranaki novelist, playwright, critic and journalist best known for his abundance of award-winning children\u2019s and young fiction books has been shortlisted listed in three categories of this year\u2019s New Zealand Children\u2019s Book Awards<\/span><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"142375750\"<\/a>His novel Enemy Camp<\/em>, which describes the shooting of Japanese prisoners at the Featherston POW Camp in World War II, is a finalist in the Junior Fiction Award, and in the Children\u2019s Choice Junior Fiction. His picture book on Sir Edmund Hillary, First to the Top<\/em>, illustrated by Phoebe Morris, is short-listed for the Children\u2019s Choice Non-Fiction Award.<\/p>\n

Mr Hill\u2019s novels for teenagers and children have been published in over a dozen countries. He is a past winner of the Esther Glen Medal and the New Zealand Post Children\u2019s Book Awards. In 2010, he was Writer-in-Residence at the University of Iowa in the United States. In 2005 he was the 15th recipient of the Margaret Mahy Award.<\/p>\n

Even with his legacy of awards, \u201chaving a bit of success makes you work better\u201d, he says from his office in the recently refurbished and gracious Sir Geoffrey Peren Building on the Manawat\u016b campus.<\/p>\n

During his three-month residency, he has been working on his latest novel for teen readers. It follows five generations of one family and is roughly based in the area of Hawke\u2019s Bay where his mother is from. The former school teacher likes to focus on historical topics in his children\u2019s books these days, saying he has realised he can no longer write convincing contemporary fiction for young people. \u201cI\u2019m not a technophile and kids\u2019 lives today are thoroughly imbued with technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"First<\/a>He\u2019s also been reading and critiquing fiction by creative writing undergraduate students, and the results have impressed him. \u201cThey are finding their own voices, and the diversity of voices is fascinating.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s found the University\u2019s creative writing community \u201cvery energetic and very supportive too. I think its great to have a department in which so many of the teachers [lecturers] are also practising writers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being able to spend three months \u201cin the company of people where you don\u2019t have to explain or justify what you are doing\u201d is especially rewarding, says the author whose favourite writers are New Zealand\u2019s Maurice Gee \u2013 \u201ca brilliant storyteller and stylist\u201d \u2013 and American novelist Cormac McCarthy, \u201cwho couldn\u2019t be more different to me as a writer\u201d.<\/p>\n

As well as doing high school visits and raising awareness of Massey\u2019s creative writing programme, he has been marvelling at the diversity of study programmes offered at Massey \u2013 from philosophy and Asian languages to vet science and engineering. He\u2019s also been relishing the natural and architectural beauty of the campus and its distinctive character, captured in his observation that; \u201cMassey is surely the only university in the Southern Hemisphere on whose map is a little square labelled \u2018equine treadmill\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the current Artist-in-Residence, he is living in a self-contained flat at the Square Edge Community Arts Centre on the Square until mid-July. Co-sponsored by Massey University and the Palmerston North City Council, the visiting artist programme is a unique opportunity to support community engagement between artists in creative writing, theatre and the media arts, which includes filmmaking.<\/p>\n

Winners of the New Zealand Children\u2019s Book Awards will be announced on August 8 at Circa Theatre in Wellington.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Massey University\u2019s literary Artist-in-Residence David Hill there is always a \u201csense of delighted disbelief\u201d whenever he is nominated for an award, even though it has been a pleasing recurrence for the prolific author. The Taranaki novelist, playwright, critic and journalist best known for his abundance of award-winning children\u2019s and young fiction books has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,100,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-writing","category-news","category-palmerston-north"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1538"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1540,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions\/1540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}