It was named after New Zealand writer Janet Frame, who died in 2004, and funded by a gift from the Janet Frame Literary Trust.
The NZSA Janet Frame Memorial Award was an award for New Zealand writers of poetry and imaginative fiction.
Janet Frame was a member of the writers’ organisation that is now called the New Zealand Society of Authors, or NZSA (then named the NZ PEN Centre) and had been greatly helped by being awarded the Hubert Church Memorial Award in 1951 for her first book, The Lagoon and other stories.
[1] This award was made possible by a bequest to the NZ PEN Centre from Hubert Church's widow in 1945.
[2][3][4] A few years after Janet Frame's death, in August 2007, the Janet Frame Literary Trust gave the NZSA a gift to fund an award in her name, to be given to an author of literary or imaginative fiction, or poetry.