From left Kathryn van Beek is this year's Robert Burns fellow, Noelle McCarthy is Victoria University's 2023 writer in residence and Anthony Byrt is this year's writer in residence at Waikato University. Photo: Supplied by Kathryn van Beek / Rebecca Zephyr Thomas / Supplied by University of Waikato
Research in 2020 showed that the average author in New Zealand earns only 33 percent of their income from writing.
Nearly 50 percent rely on another job to pay the bills.
Kathryn van Beek. Photo: Kathryn van Beek
However, a chosen few authors are about to earn a full-time income while writing, thanks to receiving one of a handful of annual Writer in Residencies across the country.
In 1958 an anonymous group of Dunedin citizens set up The Robert Burns Fellowship. Every year since, one New Zealand author has been offered a full-time university lecturer's salary and an office.
But they do not have to teach or conduct research.
They are simply given financial and physical space to write.
Kathryn van Beek is this year's Robert Burns fellow. She works four days a week at Dunedin City Council and said she was lucky that they were happy for her to disappear for a year.
Before securing the residency she had to fit writing into early mornings, evenings, and weekends, struggling to find the space to think as a writer.
"The space is a huge thing for me because I have always squeezed writing around the edges of life. As soon as life starts to become more complicated the writing, because it doesn't pay, has to be shunted away for a time," van Beek said.
Noelle McCarthy. Photo: Rebecca Zephyr Thomas
Victoria University of Wellington has hosted a writer in residence for over 40 years at the International Institute of Modern Letters.
Starting next week, Noelle McCarthy will take up the residency which also comes with an office and a weekly stipend.
McCarthy said writing a book was an enormously speculative exercise and when writing her first book her family had to take a financial hit. It would be different this time, thanks to the residency.
"I can sit down and give it time, I can spend the next few months concentrating entirely on writing my next book without worrying about how we are going to live," McCarthy said.
Anthony Byrt is this year's Writer in Residence at University of Waikato. Photo: Supplied by University of Waikato
Further north in Hamilton, art critic and writer Anthony Byrt is the University of Waikato Writer in Residence for 2023.
Byrt has been thinking about his chosen writing projects for some time, and said the residency meant he could tackle them with scale and ambition.
However, with a family, a house north of Auckland, and a partner with a full-time job, Byrt said taking up the opportunity would be a juggle and something they needed to decide on together as a family.
"It's never easy for a writer to actually go 'ok, I'm going to up sticks from where I normally live and go to this other place and sit there in an office somewhere and just write' because there all those other factors and considerations particularly around family, that you have to really think about," Byrt said.
It is hoped that all three residencies will result in written work which enhances our culture and society. But for the writers, the hard work of facing the empty page is just the beginning.
