Sargeson Fellowship

The Sargeson Fellowship is one of New Zealand’s leading national literary awards and has a distinguished history of previous fellows. It was established in 1987 to commemorate Frank Sargeson and to provide assistance to New Zealand writers.

About the Sargeson Fellowship

The fellowship offers published New Zealand writers the opportunity to write full-time, free from financial pressures. It provides an annual stipend of $20,000, and where available, the Sargeson Centre adjacent to the University of Auckland. The fellowship falls between February and October and may be shared by two fellows over the tenure period.

Any published New Zealand writer living either in New Zealand or overseas is eligible to apply for the fellowship.

The 2022 Sargeson Fellowship was awarded to Dr Anna Jackson and Nathan Joe. Click here to view the media release.

To view the Application Criteria, Terms and Conditions, click here.

To apply, click here for further information.

Frank Sargeson

Frank Sargeson was influential not only through his writing, but also as a friend and mentor to other writers.

Described as one of New Zealand’s greatest literary innovators and mentor to the literary community, Frank Sargeson was a novelist and short story writer who became internationally known as the pioneer who broke from colonial literary traditions to an idiom that expressed the rhythms of New Zealand speech and experience.

He qualified as a lawyer before committing himself to full-time writing and a day-to-day struggle which he described as “physically, mentally and financially exhausting”.

The inaugural Sargeson Fellow was the distinguished novelist, short story writer and poet Janet Frame, who had a close friendship with Frank Sargeson. The importance of this friendship to Janet Frame’s personal and literary life is clear from her account of the time she spent with Frank Sargeson in the second volume of her autobiography, An Angel At My Table.

Janet Frame was succeeded as Sargeson Fellow by the noted New Zealand poet Kevin Ireland, who was also a close friend of Sargeson. The full list of previous fellows includes:\

2022 Anna Jackson, Nathan Joe
2021 Chloe Lane and Lee Murray
2020 Hera Lindsay Bird and Michalia Arathimos
2019 Chloe Honum and Chye-Ling Huang
2018 Carl Bland and David Howard
2017 Steven Toussaint and Gregory Kan
2016 Diana Wichtel and Breton Dukes
2015 Duncan Sarkies and Robert Glancy
2014 Bianca Zander and Alice Miller
2013 Hamish Clayton and Tanya Moir
2012 David Lyndon Brown and Anna Taylor
2011 Sue Orr and Mark Broatch
2010 Sonja Yelich and Sarah Laing
2009 Steve Braunias and Julian Novitz
2008 Brigid Lowry and Paula Morris
2007 James George
2006 Emily Perkins
2005 Fiona Samuel and Peter Cox
2004 Karyn Hay and Craig Marriner
2003 Toa Fraser and Debra Daley
2002 Riemke Ensing and Denis Baker
2001 Vivienne Plumb and Chad Taylor
2000 Sue Reidy, James Brown and Charlotte Grimshaw
1999 Tina Shaw and Kapka Kassabova
1998 Catherine Chidgey and Sarah Quigley
1997 Shonagh Koea and Diane Brown
1996 Ming Cher
1995 Marilyn Duckworth, Michael King and Judith White
1994 John Cranna
1993 Bill Payne
1992 Elspeth Sandys and Gaelyn Gordon
1991 Alan Duff and Jack Lasenby
1990 Geoff Chapple
1989 Michael Beveridge
1988 Gregory O’Brien
1987 Janet Frame and Kevin Ireland