The Fellowship

To continue the support that Sargeson gave other writers during his lifetime, in 1987 the Frank Sargeson Trust set up an annual literary fellowship to provide assistance to New Zealand writers.

The inaugural Sargeson Fellow in 1987 was Janet Frame, who described the importance of Sargeson’s friendship for her personal and literary life in the second volume of her autobiography, An Angel at My Table. Frame was succeeded as Sargeson Fellow by poet Kevin Ireland, who was also a close friend of Sargeson. Since then, more than seventy New Zealand writers have benefited from the fellowship’s support.

In 1997 the fellowship became the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship when leading New Zealand law firm Buddle Findlay became the commercial sponsor of the fellowship. In 2014 the law firm Grimshaw & Co took over support for the fellowship, which for the next ten years became known as the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship.

In 2025, thanks to generous support from Emeritus Professor Janet Wilson and other donors, the fellowship became known as the Ireland Wilson Sargeson Fellowships. The new name for the Fellowships is in honour of author Kevin Ireland (1933–2023), who was himself one of the inaugural Sargeson Fellows in 1987, and writer and scholar Phillip Wilson (1922–2001), a long-time friend of Frank Sargeson.

The Ireland Wilson Sargeson Fellowships provide the opportunity each year for two outstanding published New Zealand writers to write full-time with the support of a stipend. The 2026 Fellows, announced in December 2025, are Bridget van der Zijpp and Laurence Fearnley.

For many years, the fellowship also included a residential component at the Sargeson Centre in central Auckland; this is no longer offered.

Applications open in spring each year for the following year’s fellowship.

about Kevin Ireland

Kevin Ireland OBE (1933–2023), born Kevin Jowsey, was one of NZ’s best-loved poets, known for his spare style and laconic observations, as for example ‘thin men / write gaunt poems / and each word / sticks out / like a rib’. He also wrote stories, novels, librettos and three volumes of memoir, of which the best-known is the award-winning Under the Bridge and Over the Moon (1998). Brought up on Auckland’s North Shore, where he became a protégé of Frank Sargeson, Ireland changed his name by deed poll in 1957. He spent 25 years in the United Kingdom, returning to New Zealand in 1985, when he became a full-time writer, working also on the New Zealand Listener, the literary journal Quote Unquote, and serving as president of PEN (1990–91). He was writer in residence at the University of Canterbury in 1986, Sargeson Fellow in 1987, and University of Auckland’s Writing Fellow in 1989.

about phillip wilson

Phillip John Wilson (1922–2001) was a novelist and short story writer, best remembered for his first collection of stories, Some are Lucky (1960). He wrote about World War II in the Pacific theatre, where he served in the RNZAF, in novels such as Pacific Star (1976) and Pacific Flight (1964), and he published The Maorilander (1961), a study of the novelist William Satchell. Born in Lower Hutt, Wilson attended Victoria University of Wellington, Auckland Teachers’ Training College and the University of Auckland. After the war he worked for the New Zealand Listener, studied at the University of Pennsylvania on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1951–52, and in 1958 was awarded the New Zealand Scholarship in Letters. Subsequently for some years he worked seasonally for the New Zealand Forest Service as a firewatcher in order to continue writing. He met Frank Sargeson in 1948 and corresponded with him until he moved to Auckland in 1975. He also had a close friendship with Janet Frame, and exchanged letters with her and other contemporaries such as Noel Hilliard, James Courage, Keith Sinclair, Kendrick Smithyman and Eric McCormick.

List of previous fellows

Ireland Wilson Sargeson Fellows

2026 Bridget van der Zijpp and Laurence Fearnley

Sargeson Fellows

2025 Rachael King and Kate Duignan
2024 Josie Shapiro and Zoë Meager

Grimshaw Sargeson Fellows

2023 Kelly Ana Morey and Evana Belich
2022 Anna Jackson and Nathan Joe
2021 Chloe Lane and Lee Murray
2020 Michalia Arathimos and Hera Lindsay Bird
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

Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellows

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

Sargeson Fellows

1996 Marilyn Duckworth and Judith White
1995 Ming Cher
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

Literary advisors to the fellowship selection committee

Catherine Chidgey
Charlotte Grimshaw
Karyn Hay
Anna Jackson
Nathan Joe
Graeme Lay
Emily Perkins
Vivienne Plumb
Janet Wilson