Fiona Farrell, Akaroa, ONZM, for services to literature
Ms Fiona Farrell is a writer whose first novel, ‘The Skinny Louie Book’, won the 1993 New Zealand Book Award for fiction. Novels she has written since have been shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Award and nominated for the International Dublin IMPAC Award. Farrell's short fiction has appeared in the company of Alice Munro and Hanif Kureishi in two volumes of Heinemann’s, ‘Best Short Stories’, while her poems feature in major anthologies including ‘The Oxford Book of New Zealand Poetry’ and ‘Being Alive’. Her play, ‘Chook Chook’, is one of Playmarket New Zealand’s most frequently requested scripts. Her most recent publication and first non-fiction title is ‘The Broken Book’. Ms Farrell’s received the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2007. In 2011 she was made a Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago, and in 1995 received the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship in Menton, France.