Funding · New Zealand

NZSA awards four $5,000 TCA research grants for 2026

Bebe Ngaruko, Monique Fiso, Wendy Parkins and Duncan Sarkies will use the grants to research memoir, food, historical and satirical projects.

By The Book Source4 September 20261 minute read

The New Zealand Society of Authors Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa has given four writers $5,000 each in its TCA/NZSA 2026 Research Grants. The grants come from the TCA Cultural Fund, which draws on 2% of domestic licensing income, and support research for fiction or non-fiction projects.

Auckland writer, engineer and interpreter Bebe Ngaruko will finish Jungle Journal, a memoir of civil war and exile. Monique Fiso is working with Katie Monteith and illustrator Isobel Joy Te Aho-White on How to put down a Hāngī, a guide to the history and practice of hāngī that already has a publisher.

Dunedin writer Wendy Parkins, a former professor of Victorian literature, is writing Fenice, which follows Edith Dombey from Dickens' Dombey and Son to 1850s Dunedin. Novelist and screenwriter Duncan Sarkies is researching homelessness policy for Laser Guy, a satirical superhero novel.

The panel of Steph Matuku, Philip Garnock Jones and Kerry Sunderland said the field was very strong and called Ngaruko a new literary voice to watch.

Original source: Kete Books ↗

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