This year's four University of Otago arts fellows will be formally welcomed to Dunedin at a function in the Hocken Gallery tomorrow.
Last September, the university announced Dunedin poet and novelist Emma Neale as the 2012 Robert Burns fellow, Auckland artist Nick Austin as the Frances Hodgkins fellow and Wellington composer Robbie Ellis as the Mozart fellow.
Christchurch writer and poet James Norcliffe was named as the university's College of Education-Creative New Zealand Children's Writer in Residence.
For the first time in at least five years, the university's vice-chancellor will speak at the welcoming event.
Ms Neale's novel Fosterling was on the New Zealand bestseller list for New Zealand fiction, and she has published three collections of poetry and had several poems selected for annual editions of Best New Zealand Poems.
A graduate of the Auckland University of Technology and the Elam School of Fine Arts, Mr Austin frequently exhibits work in group and solo shows.
He was a co-founder of the gallery Gambia Castle in Auckland.
Mr Ellis has co-written more than 70 musicals, and was a participant in the 2010-11 Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra Composer Workshops and a finalist in the 2009 and 2010 New Zealand Symphony Orchestra-Todd Corporation Young Composers Competition.
Mr Norcliffe won the 2010 junior fiction category of the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards with his novel The Loblolly Boy.
He also co-edited the ReDraft anthologies of writing by young New Zealand writers, the 2011 edition of which was titled The World's Steepest Street, after a short story referencing Dunedin's Baldwin St.
