2026 Varuna International Exchange New Zealand
We are excited to announce the fellowship recipients for this year’s Varuna International Exchange - New Zealand, in partnership with Michael King Writers Centre and WORD Christchurch Festival.
In this exchange, an Australian writer will visit Michael King Writers Centre for three weeks and appear at WORD Christchurch Festival, and a writer from New Zealand travels to Varuna for their residency and appearance at the Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival. The exchange was open to Varuna alumni who had published new work between 2022 - 2026.
The Australian recipient of this year’s international exchange in New Zealand is Nam Le and the New Zealand fellowship recipient is Hazel Phillips.
We would also like to highlight the Highly Commended Australian writers who were shortlisted: Kris Kneen, Hayley Scrivenor, and Nadia Mahjouri.
Congratulations to both writers! We look forward to welcoming Hazel to the house and Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival later in October this year and hearing about Nam’s experience in New Zealand when he heads there in September.
This program is made possible with funding from Creative Australia.
Nam Le
Nam Le is the author of three books, including The Boat and On David Malouf. He is also co-editor of Best of Australian Poems 2025 and Book of Hours (forthcoming). His writing has been republished in modern classics series and is widely translated, anthologised and taught. His practice also encompasses criticism and screenwriting.
Nam's most recent book 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem was published in March 2024 in Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. Poems from it appeared in Poetry, Paris Review, HEAT, Overland, American Poetry Review, Granta, BOMB, Yale Review, The Atlantic, Asymptote, Lana Turnerand elsewhere. The book was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize, the ALS Gold Medal and the Mary Gilmore Award, selected as one of New York Public Library's Best New Poetry Books, and won the NSW Literary Award for Book of the Year.
Nam's writing has also been recognised with honours including the PEN/Malamud Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Melbourne Prize for Literature, and the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award; and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, the University of East Anglia, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Sidney Myer Foundation. He is a former fiction editor of the Harvard Review.
Hazel Phillips
Hazel Phillips is a New Zealand author, journalist and history enthusiast. She is the author of five books: Great Hearts: First Ladies of Aoraki Mount Cook (Massey University Press, 2026); Fire & Ice: Secrets, histories, treasures and mysteries of Tongariro National Park (Massey University Press, 2025); Solo: Backcountry adventuring in Aotearoa New Zealand (Massey University Press, 2022); Wild Westie (Penguin, 2014), a biography of Sir Bob Harvey; and Sell! (Penguin, 2013), a history of the advertising industry.
Her immersive research into the history of women’s mountaineering earned her a Whiria Te Mahara New Zealand History Grant and the 2026 Friends of the Hocken Collections Award, while the project was also highly commended for the Copyright Licensing NZ / New Zealand Society of Authors Writers’ Award in 2025.
Hazel’s essays and journalism have been published throughout Australasia, including in the collection Otherhood (Massey University Press, 2024). Hazel holds a Master of Creative Writing with first-class honours and an MA in Media Studies. She is a past resident of the Michael King Writers Centre and the Robert Lord Writers Cottage, and was named the inaugural Luna Foundation Writers Residency recipient in 2025.
[Photo credit: Adrian Cook]
