Co-hosted by the Friends of the Hamilton Library, the Frank Sargeson Memorial Lecture is a public occasion celebrating the life and literary legacy of Frank Sargeson. Hamilton’s most famous “literary son”, Frank changed the face of New Zealand literature with his short stories and novels, and with his support of other writers. 2021's guest speaker is Charlotte Grimshaw.

From fiction to fact: How writing a memoir changed my brain.

In this lecture, Charlotte Grimshaw will talk about the personal and literary background to her recent memoir The Mirror Book.

“Writing the memoir was an attempt to find out who I was. I had no idea what I was like, and what was my real self. I’d always been able to imagine my way into other people’s experiences, in order to write fiction, but I seemed to inhabit a self that was in some sense a false front, and I wondered whether this was linked to a life lived in the midst of fiction. So the writing and research became a forensic examination, and an attempt to integrate and construct a real self.”

Charlotte is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels, two outstanding collections of linked short stories and a memoir, The Mirror Book. She has been awarded the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship and is a winner of the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award. Her story collection Opportunity was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Prize, and won New Zealand’s premier Montana Award for Fiction, along with the Montana Medal for Book of the Year. She has won a Qantas media award for her columns, and was the 2018, 2019 and 2021 Voyager Media Awards Reviewer of the Year. Her bestselling novels The Night Book and Soon have been made into the TV miniseries, The Bad Seed.

Sargeson Prize

At this year's lecture we will announce the winners of the Sargeson Prize short story competition. The Sargeson Prize is sponsored by the University of Waikato and was conceived by writer Catherine Chidgey. This year's chief judge is Patricia Grace. The competition received almost 1000 entries, and with the first-place winner receiving $6000 plus a publication payment, it is New Zealand's richest short story prize.

The winning stories will be published by Newsroom in its literary section ReadingRoom.

Please note: this event will be held within the alert level guidelines we are in at the time. We are currently placing a restriction of 100 tickets on this event to follow current guidelines. We will enable a waitlist and if the Government brings us down to Level 1 before this event, and are allowed to host more people, then we will open up registrations to the waitlist. No refreshments will be served at alert level 2.

The following guidelines will also apply:

- guests must scan in using the NZ Covid Tracer app or manual entry

- guests must wear a mask while in the building

- guests must follow social distancing where possible

Photo credit: Jane Ussher