Barbara Else, centre, who received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement for Fiction last month, is pictured with fellow Otago alumna Dinah Hawken, right, and non-fiction award winner Ross Calman, at the gala event. Photo: Mark Tantrum
Otago alumna Barbara Else MNZM says it’s truly great to be back living in a city that is so supportive of the creative arts.
Having lived in San Diego and several locations in Aotearoa New Zealand, she moved to Dunedin in 2016 with her husband Chris Else, as the University of Otago College of Education Creative New Zealand Children’s Writer in Residence, and has remained in the city ever since.
Last month Barbara received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement for Fiction, worth $60,000, at a gala event in Wellington.
“I was worried they may take the award off, me as all I could say was ‘jeepers.'" – Barbara Else
Although her parents were moving from Oamaru to Auckland, Barbara was encouraged by her mother, fellow Otago alumna Dorothy Pearson (nee Groves), to study in Dunedin.
Barbara says her mother’s Otago studies in the 1930s were funded by an aunt who worked at the Otago Dental School.
Discouraged by one of her professors for being ‘too frail’, Dorothy secretly completed her teaching certificate at the same time as her BA and is believed to be the first woman to graduate in both degrees concurrently at Otago.
Barbara says spending her first year at Carrington College rooming with her best friend from Waitaki Girls’ High School helped her to settle into university life.
“It wasn’t long after it had opened. It was the first co-ed college in Australasia.”
She studied English and History for her BA and went on to complete an MA in English Literature.
“I loved it, I really loved it, especially studying English there, I felt more confident with it each year I was there.
“I thoroughly enjoyed it; the staff were all terrific and so many of the students were really interesting.”
Barbara says Professor Alan Horsman and then-lecturer Margaret Dalziel were incredibly supportive during her studies.
She says Dalziel was “amazing and terrifying” at the same time.
“I did love living in Dunedin as a student and love living here again. One of the reasons my husband and I chose to live here is because it is a City of Literature and in fact all other art forms as well. It is such a welcoming and accepting place to live.”
Barbara received a phone call from Creative New Zealand one Friday morning informing her that she had won the Prime Minister’s Award and was shocked.
“I was worried they may take the award off me, as all I could say was ‘jeepers.'"
Barbara is the award-winning author of 13 novels, six for adults and seven for children.
Her honours include an MNZM for Services to Literature (2005), and the Margaret Mahy Medal for lifetime achievement and services to children’s literature (2016).
Her novels for adults include The Warrior Queen (Godwit 1995) and the historical novel Wild Latitudes (Vintage 2007). Her work for adults has been published internationally.
Barbara has two daughters Emma and Sarah to her first husband, Otago alumnus Dr Jim Neale (1946-1994), a former Professor at the Wellington Medical School. Emma Neale is also a writer and was a Burns Fellow at Otago in 2012.
Along with her husband, she has run a literary agency and manuscript assessment service TFS since 1988.
Fellow Otago alumna Dinah Hawken received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry at the same ceremony.
– Kōrero by Kerry Dohig, Communications Adviser Development and Alumni Relations Office.
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