JUDITH BINNEY WRITING AWARD 2025
$25,000
Dr Marianne Schultz
Stepping Lightly: The Dancing Life of Thomas O’Carroll/Jan Caryll
The Judith Binney Writing Award will allow the completion of a biography of Thomas O’Carroll, aka Jan Caryll, New Zealand’s ‘first male ballet student’. Stepping Lightly will explore the life of a relatively unknown New Zealander who established an international career in dance throughout the UK and Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.
Born in Rangiora in 1893, and raised in Ashburton, he settled in London, where his ballet teacher christened him Jan Caryll. At the end of World War I he established a career in dance performing throughout the UK and Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Intertwined with O’Carroll’s/ Caryll’s story is the transnational development of the art form of ballet in the twentieth century alongside the development of a new geopolitical world order following World War I. As the century progressed, other types of dance emerged in his repertoire, reflecting changing social norms and cultural expression.
O’Carroll’s/Caryll’s personal story also intersects with tales of exiled New Zealand male artists who, needing to find an outlet for their talent and commitment to their art, left New Zealand and who were all but overlooked thereafter in their homeland. His story highlights the changing representations of masculinity in the early twentieth century and the ways that men who danced found ways to create their own masculine identities within a period of war and reconstruction. This biography illuminates Caryll’s life story and rescues his unique dancing life from obscurity.
2025 Writers in Residence
This year’s Michael King Writers Centre residency selection panel once again had their work cut out for them with 125 applications received for the 16 residencies planned across 2025. There were a total of 613 individual applications across all of the available categories. A continuing trend is the high number of applicants in the emerging writers category. There is clearly a large and growing demand for developing writers to have an opportunity to retreat and work on their craft.
The Michael King Writers Centre Trust is looking forward to welcoming and hosting a diverse cohort of writers throughout the year.
Established writers to receive residencies are: Andrea Hotere, Ash Davida Jane, Emma Neale, Kerrin Sharpe, Marianne Schultz, Matariki Williams, Sue Reidy and Tina Shaw.
Emerging writers awarded a residency are: Ashlee Sturme, Hannah Marshall, Isla Huia, Jack Remiel Cottrell, Jason Gurney, Kerry Sunderland, Kirsteen Ure, Michelle Duff and Sam Orchard.
‘Reading and assessing this year’s applications was an enormous privilege for the selection panel’, says board of trustees Chair, Mel Winder. ‘We were energised and impressed by the quality of writing across a wide variety of projects; the future of NZ writing is looking brighter than ever’.
NYSCA/NYFA Covid relief Grant, non-fiction, literature, 2020.
New York State Council for the Arts
Ministry of Culture and Heritage - New Zealand History Research Trust Award, 2017: $12,000.
Creative New Zealand Writing Grant, 2017
Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies, Publication subsidy Award, 2015.
Greg Dening Memorial Prize, Melbourne Historical Journal, 2011
Keith Sinclair Memorial Scholarship in New Zealand History, University of Auckland, 2012 and 2013.
Best Research, New Zealand documentary, Dance of the Instant (dir. Shirley Horrocks, Point of View productions) Documentary Edge Film Festival, 2010.
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Research Fellow, 2008.
