Nick Bollinger, well-known Radio New Zealand broadcaster and journalist, says the decision to enrol in the MA programme at Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern letters (IIML) to work on Goneville, his MA thesis, represented a significant change in direction for his writing.
“I knew that for the story I wanted to tell, I would need to combine musicology and social history with something more personal. I hoped the course would help me find a way to weave these strands together.”
He describes receiving the Adam Foundation Prize as a great honour and a fantastic surprise.
“My year in the IIML’s MA programme has been incredibly inspiring. It has been a privilege to develop my work under the guidance of skilled teachers and with the companionship of an extraordinary group of fellow students. I have benefitted immeasurably from the experience and I know I will continue to draw from it in the years to come.”
The book-length folio is described by Auckland-based journalist and editor Tom McWilliams as “complex but compulsively readable, insightful and funny”.
Supported by Wellingtonians Denis and Verna Adam through the Victoria University Foundation, the $3,000 Adam Foundation Prize is awarded annually to an outstanding student in the Master of Arts in Creative Writing programme at the IIML.
In its quest to revisit and understand the early years of New Zealand rock music, Goneville traces the author’s life between 1971—when Nick was 13—and the 1981 Springbok tour—when he’d been a working musician for three years.
Weaving together a memoir of illuminating discoveries—but also great personal loss—the narrative draws on vignettes of life on the road and studies of seminal bands and recently recovered recordings. It’s a story that examines the cultural chasm opening up in the 1970s and the changes it brought about, changes that continue to shape our lives today.
Cliff Fell, a previous recipient of the Adam Prize and a co-convenor of this year’s Master’s programme, says he was completely drawn in to Nick Bollinger’s narrative voice, its intelligence, warmth and humour.
“Nick has done an unusual thing, producing a folio that is both literary in scope and popular in tone. His writing is thoughtful, amusing and lucid and his folio studded with vivid scenes and colourful characters.
“Goneville will make a book that will find a wide readership among anyone interested in music and social change, among those who were part of the scene and those who weren’t—who were perhaps in other parts of the world, as I was, or too young or not even born.”
Journalist and long-time editor Tom McWilliams, an examiner for Nick’s thesis, describes him as a natural storyteller. “I was delighted by Nick’s sure-footed, clean prose, his aims, passion and writing chops.”
Tom is looking forward to seeing Goneville in print. “The book is peopled with outlaw heroes, whose defiant lives and run-ins with the law are story-teller’s gold, and is structured on short, invitingly titled chapters any of which suggest a lively reading at a festival or on the radio.”
Previous Adam Foundation Prize recipients include acclaimed authors Eleanor Catton, Catherine Chidgey, Paula Morris and Ashleigh Young.