After 15 years living in Europe, New Zealand writer Alice Miller is returning to the Wellington university where she trained, with a year-long residency that includes an opera project commemorating the Erebus disaster.
Miller has been named the 2027 Writer in Residence at the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML), part of Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. She will take up the residency in February, with support from Creative New Zealand.
It is a return to the place where she completed a Master of Arts in 2005, after studying history and English literature at the university. She later earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2008.
Miller said: “How amazing to get to spend a year on these projects back at the IIML, where it all began for me as a writer. After 15 years away from Aotearoa, I’m so lucky to come home to this.”
During the residency she plans to work on a new novel, a collection of poems and a commissioned libretto, the words for an opera, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Erebus disaster.
The anniversary falls in 2029. On 28 November 1979, Air New Zealand Flight TE901 crashed into Mt Erebus in Antarctica, killing all 257 people on board. It remains New Zealand’s worst civil disaster.
Miller will also collaborate with her Norwegian partner on a series bringing contemporary literature from Aotearoa to Norwegian readers through translation.
Her writing spans poetry, fiction and essays. Her poetry collections include The Limits, Nowhere Nearer, What Fire and Here & Thereafter, published in the UK earlier this year. Her debut novel, More Miracle Than Bird, was published in 2020, and she has twice won the Landfall Essay Prize.
Her career has also included work at the Waitangi Tribunal and the United Nations, along with teaching writing in the United States and Europe.
Professor Damien Wilkins, director of the IIML, said: “Alice has an extraordinary set of literary skills and it will be exciting to see her writing projects develop over the year.”
The residency is jointly funded by the university and Creative New Zealand and provides a writer with a year to concentrate on their work within the university’s literary community. There are no formal duties, although the resident is expected to participate in university cultural life.
Miller added: “Especially in these rocky times, to have a year among the brilliant community at Bill Manhire House is a massive privilege.”
