Vincent O'Sullivan (New Zealand writer)


Vincent Gerard O’Sullivan is one of New Zealand's best-known writers. He is a poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, critic, editor, biographer, and librettist.

Early life and family

Born in Auckland, O'Sullivan is the youngest of five children born to Timothy O'Sullivan and Myra O'Sullivan. He was educated at St Joseph's Primary, Grey Lynn, and Sacred Heart College, Auckland, a Catholic school in Glendowie. He graduated from the University of Auckland and the University of Oxford.
O'Sullivan's first marriage was to Tui Rererangi Walsh, with whom he had two children.
He now lives in Port Chalmers, Dunedin, with his wife Helen.

Career

O'Sullivan lectured at Victoria University of Wellington. He served as literary editor of the NZ Listener from 1979 to 1980, and then between 1981 and 1987 won a series of writer’s residencies and research fellowships in universities in Australia and New Zealand: VUW, University of Tasmania, Deakin University, Flinders University in Adelaide, University of Western Australia, and University of Queensland. These were interrupted in 1983 by a year as resident playwright at Downstage Theatre, Wellington. In 1988 he returned to VUW, where he was professor of English literature until his retirement in 2004.

Honours and awards

In 1966, O'Sullivan won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry, and in 1994 he received the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship. He won the Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry in 1999.
In the 2000 Queen's Birthday Honours, O’Sullivan was appointed a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature. In 2009, following the restoration of titular honours by the New Zealand government, he declined redesignation as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
O'Sullivan was awarded the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer’s Fellowship in 2004, the 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, and the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2006. He was the New Zealand Poet Laureate for the term 2013 to 2015, and in 2016 he was the Honoured New Zealand Writer at the Auckland Writers Festival.

Works

Poetry

On writing