Writer ‘uplifted’ after receiving Janet Frame Prize

By ODT - Mark John | Posted: Tuesday Sep 02, 2025

A Dunedin novelist and poet is having an "astonishing" run after about 30 years in the game, most recently securing a $10,000 award.

Writer ‘uplifted’ after receiving Janet Frame Prize | Otago Daily Times Online News

Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit author Emma Neale (56) has been awarded the Janet Frame Prize.

She also won the Peter and Mary Biggs Prize for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards earlier this year.

The cash award comes from an endowment fund internationally renowned Dunedin author Janet Frame set up in 1999 to support and encourage her fellow New Zealand writers.

Mrs Neale said the news she was receiving the prize left her "astonished, uplifted and massively encouraged".

The award would give her time to focus on a "big work" she started this year which she had not been able to focus on because she was busy doing editing work.

She wanted to credit the generosity and foresight of Frame in creating the fund.

"She understood the struggle from close up and for her to want to nurture other writers like this, after she’s gone, has just been amazing," Mrs Neale said.

Receiving the award took away a lot of her self-doubt and anxiety that came with being a writer.

"It makes me think that maybe I have reached someone, which is what you want to do as a writer.

"It’s very gratifying and heartwarming."

Mrs Neale said she had been drilling away at her craft since she enrolled in an undergraduate paper about 30 years ago.

The award helped give her a push and sustain belief in herself to keep energy for creative work alongside other responsibilities.

She was enormously grateful to the trustees of the Janet Frame Trust.