The Robert Burns Fellowship is New Zealand's premier literary residency. It was established in 1958 by a group of anonymous Dunedin citizens to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Robert Burns, and to perpetuate the community's appreciation of the part played by the related Dunedin family of Dr Thomas Burns in the early settlement of Otago. The Fellowship aims to encourage and promote imaginative New Zealand literature and to associate writers with the University.
The annual, 12-month Fellowship provides an office in the English Department and not less than the minimum salary of a full-time university lecturer. It is open to writers of poetry, drama, fiction, biography, autobiography, essays or literary criticism who are normally resident in New Zealand, and who, in the opinion of the Selection Committee, have established by their published work, or otherwise, that their writing would benefit from their holding the Fellowship.
Applications for 2026 Otago Arts Fellowships are now open.
Apply for the Robert Burns Fellowship
See all Otago Arts Fellowships open for applications
See the list of all previous Robert Burns Fellowship recipients
The 2025 Robert Burns Fellow is Dr Octavia Cade
Dr Octavia Cade
Dr Octavia Cade is a New Zealand writer based in Kerikeri.
Her creative work is increasingly climate-influenced, realistic science fiction that takes place in contemporary or near-future settings.
Octavia’s background includes a Master’s in Biology, during which she studied seagrass reproduction, a Bachelor of Science in Botany and a PhD in Science Communication from Otago, completed in 2015.
“I’m fascinated by how science fiction talks about science,” Octavia says.
Octavia will work on two related projects as the Robert Burns Fellow. The first is a science fiction novel focused on the Otago Peninsula, after warming oceans and nitrate run-off result in toxic algal blooms that devastate coastal environments.
“I spent a year researching intertidal seaweed at the Portobello marine lab while studying botany at Otago. I’ve written short stories set at that lab before, so the opportunity to write a novel in the same setting is irresistible.”
Her second intended project is a short monograph on how the theme of ecological invasion has underpinned much of New Zealand’s speculative fiction.
“I’ve always been a fan of fantasy and science fiction. We produce a lot of it in this country, and so much of it engages with introduced species and the impacts they have on the environment.”
As someone who writes award-winning climate fiction and writes academically about speculative fiction - with approximately thirty academic papers or chapters to her credit - Octavia is well placed to produce a compelling dual narrative.
“I’m thrilled to be given the opportunity to write a novel, of course, but one of the most exciting things about the Robert Burns Fellowship, for me, is being able to talk up so many other NZ speculative writers, because they’ve had such an influence on my work.”
This hybrid academic/creative approach is a chance to promote accessibility in science and science fiction.
“The gap between humanities and the sciences does no one any favours, so having the time, space, and support to help stitch that gap a little closer together will be invaluable for my own artistic development.”
Last year, Octavia was the Ursula Bethell writer in residence at the University of Canterbury, working on a collection of creative nonfiction about NZ ecology. In 2021, she had a Michael King residency and in 2020 she received both the Christchurch Arts Centre Residency and was the Massey University/Square Edge Artist in Residence.
Funded by a grant from Creative New Zealand, Octavia has recently completed a magical realist novel centred on the aftermath of the Rainbow Warrior bombing.
Her short novels include The Stone Wētā, which a review in the Landfall journal described as “layering of meaning explored through a feminist perspective of science”. The Impossible Resurrection of Grief was described in The Spinoff Book Report as “uncanny, unsettling, brilliant”.