August 29, 2022
Writing research grant for essayist Espiner
Middlemore Hospital junior doctor and podcast host Emma Espiner from Ngāti Tukorehe and Ngāti Porou has been awarded a $5,000 Copyright Licensing New Zealand and New Zealand Society of Authors research grant to complete a collection of essays.
The collection has the working title Practical skills for the zombie apocalypse and broadly relates to the experience of training to become a doctor in Aotearoa.
The selection panel says her project promises to be well-informed, lyrical and nuanced, but also visceral in its depiction of inequalities for Māori within existing health institutions.
Other 2022 grants winners are Maria Samuela, who is working on a novel about the migration of young Cook Islands women to New Zealand during the 1930s to 1950s, and Bonnie Etherington who is using the story of her brain tumour diagnosis and recovery to address wider environmental and security issues, and Sylvan Thomson who is writing a book about fungi in Aotearoa.