Randell Cottage Writers Fellowship

Since its foundation in 2001, the Randell Cottage Writers Fellowship has offered six months of rent-free accommodation each year to mid-career New Zealand writers.  They stay in a restored heritage Cottage in Thorndon, Wellington, with a stipend to cover their living costs.  Devastatingly, Creative New Zealand has pulled its grant for the Fellowship stipend as of 2025, citing limited funding availability.  

This means the Trust is urgently seeking donations to allow this year’s selected resident, Saraid de Silva - and her successors - to continue to take up the residency.  Saraid is due to begin her stay In July, so we need help very quickly!

Saraid was chosen for 2025 from a highly competitive group of applicants, based on her track record and the potential of the writing project she submitted. The selection committee’s judgment has been borne out by the recent inclusion of Saraid’s novel Amma in the longlist for the Jann Medlicott Acorn award for literature in the 2025 Ockham Awards and sensationally in the UK Women’s Prize for Fiction.

With your help, we can enable Saraid to fulfil her creative potential, while we work to preserve the Randell Cottage residency and its contribution to the NZ arts and cultural landscape.

Saraid de Silva is a Sri Lankan Pākehā writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau.  She was the co-creator and co-host of Radio New Zealand’s podcast and video series Conversations with My Immigrant Parents and has recently worked as a storyliner, scriptwriter and script editor on New Zealand television shows including Shortland Street.

Saraid built her first novel Amma around the stories of three generations of women across multiple countries and decades. The book has been longlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for literature in the 2025 Ockham Awards and more recently the prestigious UK Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Saraid hopes that an extended stay at Randell Cottage later this year will give her the dedicated time and space to bring her newest concept to fruition.  Selection panel chair, author and poet James Norcliffe, says, “Saraid is at the right point in her career where the residency would be a real next step for her and give her a boost and platform to write a major new work that promises to be exciting, engaging and confrontational.”

We are looking for $16,500 towards the annual stipend of our 2025 writer for a six-month residency.  (This includes $1,500 for administration by Boosted to cover website costs, receipt of donations and funds transfer.)  

The energetic and dedicated volunteers who make up the Friends of Randell Cottage are fundraising through special events to match this sum and bridge the gap to our 2025 goal of $32,000.  This amount reflects the level of stipends under the Creative New Zealand Fellowship, being calculated carefully by comparison to other NZ residencies.  

Any surplus from our full range of fundraising and applications will be carried forward to fund the next writer in 2026 – whom we are determined to find a way to host, so that the Randell Cottage residency can survive into the future.

Randell Cottage sits in a private and restful garden under the shelter of Te Ahumairangi Hill, yet close to research institutions and city life.  It was built in 1867 and restored in the late 1990s by descendants of the original family, before being gifted in perpetuity as a writers’ residency in 2001.  The full background can be read on www.randellcottage.co.nz and illustrated by a video Saving Randell Cottage that features the Randell/Price donors. 

From 2002 onwards, the Randell Cottage Writers Trust has been proud to host a succession of New Zealand and French writers – and sometimes their families as well.  The residencies fill the calendar year, with the French writers able to stay from January to June and the New Zealanders from July to December.  The French residency is funded by an invested grant from the French Government and forms part of the Villa Antipode grouping of cultural residencies overseen by the Embassy of France to New Zealand.
Twenty-four New Zealand alumni have benefitted from this sought-after opportunity.  They have produced widely recognised and celebrated works as a result.  Many writers have been adamant that they could not have achieved their goals without the special benefits of this residency. 

Dame Fiona Kidman, honoured for her contribution to New Zealand literature and a Trustee Emerita of the Randell Cottage Writers Trust, was interviewed on 18 December by Andre Chumko from Welington’s Post about the loss of Creative NZ funding and the potential impact on the residency she had helped to found: https://www.thepost.co.nz/culture/360521852/prestigious-randell-cottage-writers-residency-risk 

Hinemoana Baker, the most recent Randell Cottage resident, endorses the experience of her predecessors: 
I was troubled to hear that the Trust will need to find other funding for the coming three years, but also deeply confident there are many people and organisations who will be really excited at the prospect of supporting this singular, extraordinary project. There are other residencies in the country, and indeed in the world, but so few have the combination of unique offerings that Randell Cottage does: the chance to live so close to town but in a beautifully green neighbourhood; a good chunk of time (many international opportunities for example are 2-3 months); a living wage (something I'm sure you all know is a dream for so many arts practitioners); a comfortable and well-appointed historic homestead with a working class history -- albeit from a settler colonial perspective, this history is under-told still here, I believe, and it differentiates Randell from residencies based in universities, shared apartments or other kinds of more temporary accommodations. The collaboration with the French Embassy is another plus for this residency -- meeting the new resident and learning of past Francophone writers is another way in which the residency connects us globally and culturally.

Saraid de Silva is a significant new writer whose work is receiving local and international acclaim.  A new book will cement her place in the literature of New Zealand/Aotearoa and provide readers with more of her distinguished publications.

Your contribution will also assist the Randell Cottage Writers Trust to continue the work they have done on behalf of New Zealand writers for nearly quarter of a century and provide a platform for sourcing the necessary funding for the long-term future of the Fellowship.