This year's $100,000 Michael King Writer's Fellowship has been awarded to non-fiction writer Dr Martin Edmond, winner of the 2013 Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Non-Fiction and author of some 30 publications and screenplays.
Edmond, who holds a doctorate in creative arts, plans to use the fellowship to
research and write a biographical study of four expatriate New Zealanders who played notable roles in world affairs between 1876 and 2005 and yet are little-known in their home country.
"This will be a book about the outstanding contributions four unique individuals - a journalist, a scholar, a lawyer and a librarian - made to the culture and politics of the twentieth century. It will also constitute a reflection upon New Zealand's place in the world, then and now," said Edmond.
The four people he will write about are; Harold Williams (1876 -1928), journalist, linguist and foreign editor; Ronald Syme (1903 -1989), Roman historian, libertine and spy; John Platts-Mills (1906-2001) radical lawyer, QC and political activist; and Joseph Trapp (1925 - 2005), librarian, scholar and sportsman.
"All acknowledged, respected, indeed loved their place of birth and upbringing. They remained, in other words, New Zealanders."
