[5][6][7][8] In 2002, on the suggestion of her daughter Susan Price, Beverley Randell decided to gift the cottage to a trust for the purpose of setting up a writers' residency.

[6][8][9][10] The plan was partly inspired by an attempt to set up a similar residency in memory of the poet Lauris Edmond, which had been unsuccessful.

Everything about the place was familiar — from the New Zealand timber floorboards to the very positioning of the sash windows that looked out to a garden of native trees and hydrangeas.

I had spent Wairarapa holidays in cottages like this, with a coal range in the kitchen and a lean-to pantry with a tin roof that gave off to one side.

Even the kinds of prints on the wall, the blue-and-white china in the pantry, were familiar.Caroline Laurent, the 2021 French recipient, was unable to take up the residency during the year due to COVID-19 border restrictions.