Robert Burns Fellow, Dunedin poet and writer Sue Wootton, will use her tenure to produce a third collection of poetry and her first collection of short stories.
Auckland painter Heather Straka is the 2008 Frances Hodgkins Fellow and plans to work with the Dunedin School of Medicine on a project looking at the history of dissection and the human body in the Renaissance.
The 2008 Mozart Fellow is Christopher Watson, who will use the fellowship to compose several works, including a duo for percussion and violin, which will premiere in the Netherlands next year, and a chamber opera based on the Wairau Affray, in which his Ngai Tahu ancestor, Puaka, was involved.
The 2008 Caroline Plummer Fellow is former Dunedin resident Barbara Snook, an independent dance education consultant based in Brisbane. Having lost a mother, daughter and husband to cancer, Ms Snook plans to work on a project focused on the community around cancer sufferers.
Mosgiel author Bill O'Brien has been chosen as the University of Otago-College of Education writer in residence for 2008. The six-month residency is open to established children's writers.
A former Dunedin police officer who now writes full-time, Mr O'Brien will take up the position next month and plans to work on a children's adventure novel set in the West Coast coalfields during the early 1900s.