As part of the New Zealand Young Writers Festival, Dunedin writers Erin Gourley and Molly Crighton have been spending time at the museum, and each explained to spectators at a writers panel how it had influenced their work.
The session was hosted by Louise Wallace, editor of
Starling, a journal which publishes works by writers aged under 25, including Gourley and Crighton.
Ms Crighton read a selection of poems, some of which were directly inspired by the museum’s natural history gallery the Animal Attic.
Ms Gourley confessed that her short story, centred around Dunedin flatting life, was a work in progress before she started the residency, but that some newly added darker material might have been inspired by the taxidermy birds in the Animal Attic.
