The Janet Frame Prize 2025 awarded to Emma Neale
By Ōtepoti He Puna Auaha | Dunedin UNESCO City Of Literature | Posted: Thursday Aug 28, 2025
In memory of Janet Frame who was born 101 years ago on this day. Congratulations Emma!
The Trustees of the Janet Frame Literary Trust are delighted to announce that the 2025 recipient of the Janet Frame Prize is acclaimed Ōtepoti Dunedin novelist and poet Emma Neale, who will receive a gift of $10,000 from an endowment fund that Janet Frame established in 1999 to support and encourage her fellow New Zealand writers.
Emma Neale is the author of fourteen works of fiction and poetry, the most recent of which, Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit (Otago University Press) won the Peter and Mary Biggs Prize for Poetry at the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Emma works as a freelance editor for publishers in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. She said:
"The award has come at a time just when my editing workload has meant I wondered if I’d ever manage to find headspace to explore a longer fiction project again. This generous gift will allow me to set time aside early next year to really read attentively and experiment more with approaches to that project.
"To hear that the trust has awarded me this prize has been nothing short of astonishing. Janet Frame’s work and example has helped to shape my private thoughts, my life, and my writing ever since I studied her fiction, autobiography and poetry in my twenties. Her poetic, complex, experimental work, with its richly figurative language that explores the interior life so deeply, still stands as a beacon for many creative artists."
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