Sir Vincent O'Sullivan | |
|---|---|
 O'Sullivan in 2022 | |
| Born | Vincent Gerard O'Sullivan 28 September 1937 Auckland, New Zealand |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford |
Sir Vincent Gerard O'Sullivan KNZM (born 28 September 1937) is one of New Zealand's best-known writers. He is a poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, critic, editor, biographer, and librettist.
Born in Auckland, [1] O'Sullivan is the youngest of six children born to Timothy O'Sullivan (born in Tralee, Ireland) and Myra O'Sullivan (née McKean). He was educated at St Joseph's Primary, Grey Lynn, and Sacred Heart College, Auckland, in Glendowie. He graduated from the University of Auckland and the University of Oxford.
O'Sullivan's first marriage was to Tui Rererangi Walsh, with whom he had two children; Dominic O'Sullivan and Deirdre O'Sullivan. He now lives in Port Chalmers, Dunedin, with his wife Helen. [2]
O'Sullivan lectured at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) from 1963 to 1966, and the University of Waikato between 1968 and 1978). [3] He served as literary editor of the NZ Listener from 1979 to 1980, and then between 1981 and 1987 won a series of writer’s residencies and research fellowships in universities in Australia and New Zealand: VUW, University of Tasmania, Deakin University (Geelong), Flinders University in Adelaide, University of Western Australia, and University of Queensland. [3] These were interrupted in 1983 by a year as resident playwright at Downstage Theatre, Wellington. [3] In 1988 he returned to VUW, where he was professor of English literature until his retirement in 2004. [1] Notable students include Majella Cullinane. [4]
In 1966, O'Sullivan won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry, in 1979 he received the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award for a short story, [5] and in 1994 he received the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship. He won the Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry in 1999.
In the 2000 Queen's Birthday Honours, O’Sullivan was appointed a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature. [6] In 2009, following the restoration of titular honours by the New Zealand government, he initially declined redesignation as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, [7] because, in his view, it did not fit New Zealand "historically and socially", and that "it didn't seem to make much sense in contemporary New Zealand society". [8] However, he accepted the change in December 2021. [9]
O'Sullivan was awarded the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer's Fellowship in 2004, [10] the 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, and the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2006. [11] He was the New Zealand Poet Laureate for the term 2013 to 2015, [12] [13] and in 2016 he was the Honoured New Zealand Writer at the Auckland Writers Festival. [14]
The Dark is Light Enough: Ralph Hotere a Biographical Portrait won for him the 2021 General non-fiction award at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. [15]
Kathleen Mansfield Murry was a New Zealand writer and critic who was an important figure in the modernist movement. Her works are celebrated across the world, and have been published in 25 languages.
New Zealand literature is literature, both oral and written, produced by the people of New Zealand. It often deals with New Zealand themes, people or places, is written predominantly in New Zealand English, and features Māori culture and the use of the Māori language. Before the arrival and settlement of Europeans in New Zealand in the 19th century, Māori culture had a strong oral tradition. Early European settlers wrote about their experiences travelling and exploring New Zealand. The concept of a "New Zealand literature", as distinct from English literature, did not originate until the 20th century, when authors began exploring themes of landscape, isolation, and the emerging New Zealand national identity. Māori writers became more prominent in the latter half of the 20th century, and Māori language and culture have become an increasingly important part of New Zealand literature.
Fleur Adcock is a New Zealand poet and editor, of English and Northern Irish ancestry, who has lived much of her life in England. She is well-represented in New Zealand poetry anthologies, was awarded an honorary doctorate of literature from Victoria University of Wellington, and was awarded an OBE in 1996 for her contribution to New Zealand literature. In 2008 she was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature.
Witi Tame Ihimaera-Smiler is a New Zealand author. Raised in the small town of Waituhi, he decided to become a writer as a teenager after being convinced that Māori people were ignored or mischaracterised in literature. He was the first Māori writer to publish a collection of short stories, with Pounamu, Pounamu (1972), and the first to publish a novel, with Tangi (1973). After his early works, he took a ten-year break from writing, during which he focused on editing an anthology of Māori writing in English.
William Manhire is a New Zealand poet, short story writer, emeritus professor, and New Zealand's inaugural Poet Laureate (1997–1998). He founded New Zealand's first creative writing course at Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, founded the International Institute of Modern Letters in 2001, and has been a strong promoter of New Zealand literature and poetry throughout his career. Many of New Zealand's leading writers graduated from his courses at Victoria. He has received many notable awards including a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in 2007 and an Arts Foundation Icon Award in 2018.
Owen Marshall Jones, who writes under the pen name Owen Marshall, is a New Zealand short story writer and novelist. The third son of a Methodist minister younger brother of Allan Jones, and older brother of Rhys Jones, he came of age in Blenheim and Timaru, and graduated from the University of Canterbury with an MA in English in 1964. Marshall taught in a rural boys' high school for 25 years before becoming a full-time author.
Ronald Allison Kells Mason was a New Zealand poet. Described by Allen Curnow as New Zealand's "first wholly original, unmistakably gifted poet", he was born in Penrose, Auckland on 10 January 1905. He was educated at Auckland Grammar School, where he met fellow poet A. R. D. Fairburn. Mason was the holder of the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in 1962. He died in Takapuna, Auckland on 13 July 1971.
O.E. Middleton was a New Zealand writer of short stories, described as belonging to the vernacular critical realist tradition of Frank Sargeson. He was the brother of noted New Zealand novelist Ian Middleton, and like him also blind from middle age. Mentored by Frank Sargeson in Auckland in the late 1950s, he moved to Dunedin to take up the Robert Burns Fellowship (1970) at the University of Otago.
Anne Kennedy is a New Zealand novelist, poet, and filmwriter.
"The Wind Blows" is a short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published in the magazine Signature as “Autumns: II” under the pseudonym Matilda Berry. It was published in revised form in the Athenaeum on 27 August 1920, and subsequently reprinted in Bliss and Other Stories.
The Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, formerly known as the New Zealand Post Katherine Mansfield Prize and the Meridian Energy Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship, is one of New Zealand's foremost literary awards. Named after Katherine Mansfield, one of New Zealand's leading historical writers, the award gives winners funding towards transport to and accommodation in Menton, France, where Mansfield did some of her best-known and most significant writing.
Rachel Phyllis McAlpine is a New Zealand poet, novelist and playwright. She is the author of 30 books including poetry, plays, novels, and books about writing and writing for the internet.
Janet M. Wilson is a UK-based New Zealand academic who specialises in post colonial New Zealand literature.
Robert Lord was the first New Zealand professional playwright. He was one of the first New Zealand playwrights to have plays produced abroad since Merton Hodge in the 1930s.
Stuart Hoar is a New Zealand playwright, teacher, novelist, radio dramatist and librettist.
Anna Jackson is a New Zealand poet, fiction and non-fiction writer and an academic.
Michael Harlow is a poet, publisher, editor and librettist. A recipient of the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship (1986) and the University of Otago Robert Burns Fellowship (2009), he has twice been a poetry finalist in the New Zealand Book Awards. In 2018 he was awarded the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement, alongside playwright Renée and critic and curator Wystan Curnow Harlow has published 12 books of poetry and one book on writing poetry.
Margaret Allan Scott was a New Zealand writer, editor and librarian. After her husband's early death in 1960, she trained as a librarian, and was appointed as the first manuscripts librarian at the Alexander Turnbull Library. She was the second recipient of the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship in 1971.
David Mitchell was a New Zealand poet, teacher and cricketer. In the 1960s and 1970s he was a well-known performance poet in New Zealand, and in 1980 he founded the weekly event "Poetry Live" which continues to run in Auckland as of 2021. His iconic poetry collection Pipe Dreams in Ponsonby (1972) sold well and was a critical success, and his poems have been included in several New Zealand anthologies and journals. A collection of his poems titled Steal Away Boy: Selected Poems of David Mitchell was published in 2010, shortly before his death.
Iain Malcolm Lonie was a British-born New Zealand poet and a historian of ancient Greek medicine. His academic career was spent between New Zealand, Australia and England. He read classics at the University of Cambridge, lectured at universities in both Australia and New Zealand, worked as a research fellow for the Wellcome Trust, and wrote a definitive textbook on the Hippocratic texts On Generation, On the Nature of the Child and Diseases IV.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
