Vincent O’Sullivan

Profile
Vincent O’Sullivan is one of New Zealand’s most eminent writers and scholars. Internationally renowned for editing Katherine Mansfield’s letters, he is also an award-winning novelist and playwright. The jewel in his literary crown is his poetry, which reveals a powerful intellect brought to bear on a world of continual change and curiosity.

Selected published works
Seeing You Asked, 1998; Lucky Table, 2001; Nice Morning for It, Adam, 2004, poetry category of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2005; Blame Vermeer, 2007.

Vincent O'Sullivan's fiction can be found here.

Publishers
Victoria University Press www.vuw.ac.nz/vup
Penguin Books New Zealand www.penguin.co.nz

Biography
Vincent O’Sullivan was born in Auckland in 1937. He graduated from the Universities of Auckland and Oxford and has lectured in the English departments of Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Waikato.

O’Sullivan is the author of two novels: Let the River Stand, which won the 1994 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and Believers to the Bright Coast, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Tasmania Pacific Region Prize. He has also written many plays and collections of short stories and, of course, poetry. His collection Seeing You Asked (Victoria University Press, 1998) won Best Book of Poetry at the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, the same year that Believers to the Bright Coast was runner up for the Deutz Medal for Fiction.

His 2001 collection of poetry Lucky Table was shortlisted in the poetry section of the 2001 The Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Nice morning for It, Adam was published to acclaim in 2004 and won the poetry category of the 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

O’Sullivan has a well-earned reputation as a thoughtful and incisive editor and critic and was joint editor of the five-volume The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (1984) and has edited a number of major anthologies. His biography of New Zealand writer John Mulgan, called Long Journey to the Border, was published in 2003.

Vincent O’Sullivan has been awarded numerous writer residencies and research fellowships at Australasian universities. He spent 1983 as resident playwright at Downstage Theatre, Wellington. In 1994, he was the Meridian Energy Katherine Mansfield Fellow in Menton, France. He was appointed Director of Victoria University of Wellington’s Stout Research Centre in 1997 and is now Emeritus Professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington. O’Sullivan was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2000 Queen’s Birthday Honours. In 2004, he was awarded the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer’s Fellowship to work on a major project. In 2006, Vincent O'Sullivan was honoured with the 2006 Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement in poetry. He is the 2009 resident at the Michael King Writers Centre in Auckland.